Quick In-Between Update
over 3 years ago
– Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 01:38:42 AM
Hello Grim & Deliberate Beast Backers!
This is Alec from Dubious Merit Games.
Just a quick touchpoint here: We're in the manufacturing pipeline for the cards, and currently working out bulk shipping details.
As soon as the cards are printed I'll post a full update with pics of the finished cards. I'm hoping the cards will be printed by the end of next week.
Thanks for your support and hopefully we'll have substantial news to share soon. We're still hard at work on this project, and we'll ship the first round of physical rewards as soon as we receive them.
-Alec
Info from our last update:
The Blog
In the meantime, we’re still hard at work on the blog. It is now over 400 pages of original, new material for your campaigns and one of the largest repositories of monster writing online.
And we plan to make it even better. Over the summer we’ll be adding links to all our Monster Profiles so that when you click on Orcs, for example, you’ll find not only our original writing, but links for all the other major Orc pages on the net. We want the G&DB blog to become a hub for DMs and players everywhere.
Read our newest Monster Profiles:
Basilisks by Rett Weissenfels
Drow Elves by Alec Wilson
Manticores by Vassar Oenbring
Duergar by Alec Wilson
The Demogorgon by Vassar Oenbring
Gelatinous Cubes by Alec Wilson
Need to take care of any campaign details? Use our PM, whether you need to change your address, update your email, or add anything to your pledge.
The Pledge Manager:
https://the-grim-and-deliberate-beast.backerkit.com/
Any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions?
Please get in touch, we love hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Alec Wilson
[email protected]
Good News and Bad News: The Ongoing Saga of your Monster AI Cards
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 05:47:03 PM
Hi G&DB Backers,
This is Alec from Dubious Merit Games and The Grim & Deliberate Beast Blog.
I took longer than usual to release this update because it was important to me to present you with a solution, not just a problem.
In a nutshell, here’s the bad news:
- The printing company we started with for your Monster AI Cards became unresponsive.
- They extended the shipping timelines three times, then stopped responding to our emails altogether.
- We had to drop them and start over with a new company.
- This is going to extend delivery times for your rewards.
In a nutshell, here’s the good news:
- We’re now working with a larger, more experienced company to manufacture your Monster AI Cards.
- We upgraded the paper for your cards to 350gsm.
- We got our deposit back.
Our way of saying thanks for your patience:
- We'll be sending extra dice to everyone who pledged for physical rewards. For example, if you pledged for cards but no dice, you will receive HV dice as well. If you pledged for HV dice, you'll get the dice you pledged for + a set of dice (Cursed or Doubles) that you didn't pledge for. If you ordered all three sets of custom dice from our pre-order store, you'll get an extra set you can give to a gaming friend.
The Upshot
So what happened here?
Back in November of 2020, we began reaching out to game manufacturing companies for quotes to make your Monster AI cards.
If you’re a frequent Kickstarter backer, you’re likely aware that most game manufacturers are located in China, and that most “US based” game companies are just intermediaries who do business under a US address, and charge a premium to act as go-between with the Chinese factory they actually use to produce your game.
To cut out the middleman for this project, we reached out directly to the Chinese factories this time, and heard back from 8 of them.
We went with the one that seemed responsive, cheap, excited to work on our small project (1000 decks of cards is a small order that some larger companies won’t even consider) and had experience making the product we were looking for: Oversized, full-color cards.
So far, so good. We sent them the card art back in February and everything seemed to be moving along fine. The prototypes they sent us were great. Then they sent us pictures of the initial print run, and we identified some mistakes. This is where things took a turn.
For the sake a brevity and to keep things positive, I’m going to abridge the exchanges I had with the factory rep, and boil it down for you.
If you’d like more detail, please email me directly. If you like, I can send photos and screenshots of the product and correspondence.
I asked for clarity on a number of details, including:
1) That the final print run would be printed on a high-end, offset printing machine.
2) That the card corners would be machine rounded.
3) That the tuck box would be die cut (not hand cut).
The answers I received were very positive, but the ship date kept getting pushed further and further out. Eventually, the response times got so long I realized I had to pull the plug.
I can only guess what happened here. My best guess is that the company underbid the project and when I questioned them about the initial print run to make sure quality was high they decided they couldn’t make money on the project. Rather than telling me this, they simply stopped responding. Unfortunately this process dragged out for months, as I did not want to cancel the project and start over with a new company unless I absolutely had to.
Currently, we are looking at a 60-day delivery time with the new company. But we are now back at the beginning of the process—they just accepted the artwork for the cards and tuck box. I will update you when the printing is finished, and again when they actually ship the product to me.
Thank you so much for your continued patience and support. This was not the update I wanted to write, but this decision was necessary to maintain the quality of the final product. I can’t ship rewards to you that don’t measure up to what we promised.
Please contact me with any questions you might have, I’m an open book.
The Blog
In the meantime, we’re still hard at work on the blog. It is now over 400 pages of original, new material for your campaigns and one of the largest repositories of monster writing online.
And we plan to make it even better. Over the summer we’ll be adding links to all our Monster Profiles so that when you click on Orcs, for example, you’ll find not only our original writing, but links for all the other major Orc pages on the net. We want the G&DB blog to become a hub for DMs and players everywhere.
Read our newest Monster Profiles:
Basilisks by Rett Weissenfels
Drow Elves by Alec Wilson
Manticores by Vassar Oenbring
Duergar by Alec Wilson
The Demogorgon by Vassar Oenbring
Gelatinous Cubes by Alec Wilson
Need to take care of any campaign details? Use our PM, whether you need to change your address, update your email, or add anything to your pledge.
The Pledge Manager:
https://the-grim-and-deliberate-beast.backerkit.com/
Any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions?
Please get in touch, we love hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Alec Wilson
[email protected]
A Quick Update: HV, Cursed, and Doubles Dice are here!
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 10:39:10 AM
Hello Grim & Deliberate Beast backers!
All our custom-series dice have arrived!
There are available at our pre-order store here.
This is Alec from Dubious Merit Games. I hope you are all doing well. In this quick April update I'll share:
- The dice have arrived! Cursed, Doubles, and High-Variance dice.
- We're ready to ship as soon as we receive the Monster A.I. cards from the printer.
- We're hoping to receive the cards by the end of May, but international shipping times are ridiculous right now.
If you'd like detailed commentary on these extended timelines, plus thoughts on what we've learned from this project, please check out our last update from March.
All Our Custom Series Dice Have Arrived!
They are packed and ready to ship out. Check out these pics:
We're ready to ship!
We're ready to lovingly stuff these little boxes with your rewards the instant we receive the Monster A.I. cards.
So when are we receiving the cards?
We're hoping by the end of May. There have been long delays in international shipping, and we will update you as soon as we have new info, just as we did with the dice (which also took a very long time to reach us.)
And what about the Tome of Lore?
We're aiming for a late summer release and taking our time with the writing to ensure that the quality stays high.
Please check our progress on the blog.
Need to take care of any campaign details? Use our PM, whether you need to change your address, update your email, or add anything to your pledge.
The Pledge Manager:
https://the-grim-and-deliberate-beast.backerkit.com/
Any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions?
Please get in touch, we love hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Alec Wilson
[email protected]
March Update!
almost 4 years ago
– Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 10:33:35 AM
Hello everyone!
This is Alec from Dubious Merit Games.
Here's the full March update for each aspect of your Grim & Deliberate Beast.
- I'll present it first in nutshell form, then break it down section-by-section in detail.
- I'll also wax philosophic and talk about the three main things we've learned from this campaign.
Let's dive in.
In a Nutshell
- The Grim & Deliberate Beast Blog. Monster Profiles, d100-rollable tools, fine art, and much more. The blog is live, and a great way to track our progress.
- Boutique Monster A.I. Cards. 50 full-color, oversized 4×6 Monster A.I. Cards printed on premium heavyweight cardstock. Set the mood for your encounters. The cards have been manufactured and are in the shipping pipeline. We're waiting to take the bulk delivery.
- Bloodlust Custom Dice. Wake up the room! Cursed Dice, High-Variance Dice, and Doubles Dice from our custom molds. The dice have been manufactured and are in the shipping pipeline. We've received 1 out of 6 packages of dice (the Cursed dice) and are waiting to take bulk delivery of the rest.
- The Tome of Lore. All our original content in one place. The full A.I. system, and much more. A major new RPG supplement for your campaigns. The content for the Tome is the most intensive part of this project, and we're taking our time with it to maintain quality.
In More Detail:
We didn't set out to make a blog at the beginning of this process, but this has turned into a great way to track the project, interact with artists, writers, and RPG fans, and the best way to share what we're doing with the community.
All 50 pieces of monster art are done. And there are already a bunch of d100-rollable tools and hundreds of pages of RPG-related content on the blog.
Check it out if you haven't already. Bookmark the page. You can't anticipate when you might need to know the mating habits of Cockatrices.
The cards were manufactured just over 2 weeks ago and they look great! Full-color art on one side and cleanly-designed info on the other.
The cards are in the shipping pipeline and we're waiting to receive the bulk delivery.
We'll send you your cards, along with your dice, the moment we receive them.
We're fully geared up and ready to begin packing your orders. We'll be shipping in boxes this time (not padded envelopes!) to keep your stuff 100% protected.
**This is the image the plant sent the last time I asked for a shipping update. You can use those tracking numbers to keep tabs on the bulk shipment of dice, if you like! We've received 1/6 boxes so far.**
The dice were manufactured almost 50 days ago and we're still waiting to receive them.
The dice have been sitting in port in the US, waiting for UPS to pick them up and deliver them. Such is the state of shipping during COVID times right now, all over the world.
Thus far, we've received 1/6 packages (the Cursed dice) and are waiting to take bulk delivery of the rest.
We'll ship out your dice, along with your cards, the moment we receive them.
The content for the Tome is the most intensive part of this project, and we're taking our time with it to maintain quality. We're now now turning our full attention back to the Tome, and will be hiring new writers to help bring it home.
So, what have we learned from this campaign?
For starters, this campaign has been an exploding joy to create.
The support and interaction of the community has been unreal--you've allowed us to greatly expand on concepts and tools we've used for years in our own RPG campaigns, and make them into something everyone can use.
And our work with the many talented artists and writers involved with this project has been a constant source of inspiration.
But there have been some hiccups along the way, and we want to acknowledge those as well.
This is not the last project we will create, not by a long shot. We want you to know how seriously we take our promise to you: To deliver you a beautiful, valuable product, in a timely manner. The timelines for this project have been extended in ways we didn't anticipate, and we've learned from it. We'll use this knowledge to improve future campaigns.
We've learned a ton along the way, but here are the top 3 things that have affected our timelines:
1. International shipping, especially during the time of COVID, is a time factor we needed to take into account. We will in the future.
2. Content development is the most time-consuming part of any project that involves a lot of writing. We have some serious writers on the team, but keeping quality high for the Monster Profiles has taken much more time than anticipated. We're now turning our attention back to the Monster Profiles after a long break attending to other aspects of the project. We'll be hiring more writers, and maintaining our commitment to quality. I will continue to personally edit each Monster Profile before accepting it, to ensure quality and aesthetic fit. It's also worth noting that as we wrote our Monster Profiles, we kept expanding them. Our original time estimate for the project was based on 500-word Monster Profiles. But most of our Profiles are now over 2000 words! Which lead to #3...
3. Mid-project expansion is not great for timelines. We got caught in a common creator trap here--most creators who truly enjoy what they're doing add to it along the way, but when you have an excited audience who understandably wants their rewards when you promised them, you have to strike a balance. In the future, we'll continue to insist on high quality, but we'll stick to more clearly-defined objectives to keep ourselves on track, time-wise.
When do the rewards ship?
- The cards and dice will ship to you as soon as we receive them. Our dice have been sitting in port for weeks now, and our cards just shipped from the factory. Our best guess for when we will have both cards and dice in hand is now May. On our end, we are fully locked and loaded, and will ship them out to you within 2 days of receiving the bulk order.
- We are estimating completing content for the Tome in the summer of 2021. ALL the content we produce will be included in the PDF. We'll have to make choices about what goes in the print Tome, to keep it a reasonable length.
A huge thank you
for your continued support and patience.
Need to take care of any campaign details? Use our PM, whether you need to change your address, update your email, or add anything to your pledge.
The Pledge Manager:
Any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions?
Please get in touch, we love hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Alec Wilson
[email protected]
Our Custom Series Dice are now available! Pics inside.
almost 4 years ago
– Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 04:52:00 PM
Hello again everyone!
This is Alec from Dubious Merit Games, back with a quick update.
- We've just added our new Custom Series Dice to both the Pledge Manager and the Pre-Order store for the Grim & Deliberate Beast!
- We've put all our new offerings at the top of the page, and marked them as 'Creator's Choice.'
- Note to non-US Backers: Thank you for your support! If your initial pledge level INCLUDES shipping, you can now purchase add-ons with vastly reduced shipping. If you backed at the PDF-ONLY level, please upgrade your pledge to a level that includes physical items (and therefore shipping) before your purchase add-ons.
Thanks everyone!
Your support on this project has been incredible.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions, feel free to get in touch.
-Alec
[email protected]
