LAST 48 HOURS: New stretch goal: MINIS!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Oct 08, 2020 at 08:41:47 AM

YOU ASKED FOR IT, AND WE'RE GONNA DO IT (hopefully)

Y'all wanted minis. I know you did. I wanted minis, too. So, if we can break 100k in the final 48 hours, WE'LL GET MINIS.

This update is breaking format a bit because it is 1:30 AM and I really should be going to sleep, but instead I am writing a tidbit for y'all because I wanted to share how close we were to completion, and announce the minis goal.

What about the adventure paths?

Those are happening! Today I met with the writer leading the design, Tim Bailey, to begin the process of outlining how this full-scale campaign from 4th to 20th level will look, and I ALREADY love some of the ideas that are being thrown around.

If we can hit 90k, this will be available as a softcover campaign guide! Otherwise, this will be available as a PDF, and any stretch goals will yield digital PDFs of the appropriate levels (see our Stretch Goals section on the Kickstarter for more details). This AP will be completed sometime in 2021, and I'll keep everyone abreast of the development process. If you'd like to talk to Tim and ask him questions, hit him up on Twitter, or join our Discord and ping him!

I wanna play in a playtest game!

Then get your ASS in our DISCORD and sign up! We're running them even after the Kickstarter campaign ends, 1-2 games a week run by a member of Action Fiction! Perfect chance to try out some of our new content and meet us face-to-face!

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Anyhoo, apologies for the very brief update. We have 48 hours left to go and my life is getting SUPER hectic trying to cover all our bases! If y'all have questions, please do feel comfortable asking them. Otherwise, I will talk to you all very soon! Thank you for being a part of this journey and making this book such a huge, critical success.

Each and every one of you have advantage on one roll at your next game, on me. Show this update to your GM. If they fight you on it, then, uhhh... Well, I'll be sad for you, but they're the GM, and I have no power in your game.

KEEP BEING AMAZING. BLESS UP.

- Jaron R. M. Johnson

jrmj

60k! Also, check out Tome of Summoning.
over 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 07:23:04 AM

Tome of Summoning

Not sure if you've seen this, but this resource book looks INCREDIBLE, and has already raised over 100k with over 1,000 backers! 

Tome of Summoning: The All-In-One 5e Reference System

This book serves as a reference system for NPCs and creatures for your 5e adventures, and even has these awesome little folded tokens for creatures! The big purple book also lets you store hundreds of reference cards and minis, and is super portable.

These cards are SUPER handy, my mind is blown that nobody has done this before.

Anyway, I wanted to share this campaign because it ends in THREE days (same day as ours!), and I definitely think it's worth your checking out.

Tome of Summoning Kickstarter

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Also, Monsters of Murka update about the Adventure Paths coming this evening, after a meeting with the project lead!

jrmj

50k Unlocked! New stretch goals: Free APs up to 90k! Printed Adventure Paths!
over 5 years ago – Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 08:45:26 PM

Before we start, check this out.

Nord Games is creating an Ultimate Beastiary full of RAD minis.

Unleash the horde! These 30 masterfully sculpted miniatures are based on the goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and ogres that were featured in Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde. These miniatures are perfect for fantasy roleplaying games like D&D and Pathfinder, as well as miniature wargames!

Check it out now!

Alright, now on to the big update.

WE HIT 50k. Y'all seriously hit our Kickstarter with 3k in ONE DAY, and that was WILD. So, let's talk about what comes next.

Spell/Monster/Item Card add-ons

I'm hard at work today (on top of working on editing through R&R content and Cryptids content) designing the cards. I'm referencing 5e's Item/Monster/Spell cards and trying to figure out how ours will look.

I'm also currently waiting on a quote back from a card manufacturer, so although we've unlocked this stretch goal, I'm holding off on making it available to add-on to your pledge until I know exactly how this will work. So PLEASE do not add anything on to your pledge for these. 

Remember that you can always get more add-ons through our Pledge Manager AFTER the campaign ends.

 Adventure Paths

So, for the next few goals, we're working on a great big campaign set in the Restaurants & Retail book! The lead design of this story is coming from myself and Tim Bailey, one of the writers for Restaurants & Retail. The adventure paths themselves will be written by a team of writers, and will take you from levels 4 to 20. It will also include guidelines on how to run a level 1-3 adventure to get your characters ready for the R&R APs.

At this point, these APs WILL be designed no matter what. The stretch goals are purely to get these APs for FREE for all backers. 

So, in 2021, we will absolutely be releasing the completed adventure paths. But now is your chance to get all of these APs for free just by backing the campaign, and if we can hit 90k, you'll get them not only for free, but backers who backed at a physical tier will also get them as a SOFTCOVER BOOK!

 A General "How's It Going" Update

Things are progressing at break-neck speeds for the Action Fiction team. Right now, I'm speaking with a potential new book printer, a card manufacturer, and a fulfillment contact who will be able to keep shipping costs MUCH lower than they were for the first Kickstarter. 

Yesterday, we received the hardback books for the first Kickstarter, and good lord. It felt VERY surreal to be receiving a pallet of my own books into my own garage. But, we did.

Today, I have to go pick up my car from the shop (where I will have to return it in several weeks to repair a broken strut :'[ my luck), then take some materials to different shippers to get our books from the first campaign out to everyone. Surplus books will be sent to our fulfillment location, who will be shipping core book materials for backers to this campaign! This means almost all of your stuff should ship together.

Also, today we're having a lot of editing meetings. I'm very proud of the team coming together to make this book a reality. Admittedly, I've been running myself ragged, and so today after I take care of all the meetings and travel and hopefully find time to eat, I will be taking a break. There is still SO much to do, and I'm certainly going to do it. I just need to make sure I leave time for self-care and mental health care, not just for me, but for the entire contributing team.

At any rate, every time I get notified of a new comment, a new question, or a new like to an update I wrote, I nearly cry tears of joy. I LOVE it when y'all leave comments and ask questions or tell me what you think about the book. I share it with the entire team, many of whom are first time designers, and it makes their day, sometimes even their week. Please continue to share with us how you feel about this, and continue to ask questions if you have them!

As a reminder, if you want an IMMEDIATE response from me or from a contributing team member, your best bet is to join our Discord and ask us there!

Cheers, gang. I love you all truly, madly, and deeply.

jrmj

We hit 1k backers! Also, have you heard of The Red Opera?
over 5 years ago – Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 09:55:31 PM

HOLY HOT DAMN, Y'ALL. WE DID IT.

I love you all so much. We hit 1,000 backers, which means 1,000 of you folks have decided to take a journey into Murka. The team and I are so humbled, and so pleased, to have you along for the journey.

I wanted to keep this update brief, mostly because our very good friends at Apotheosis Studios are currently running a Kickstarter for their 5e campaign, The Red Opera: Last Days of The Warlock, and their kickstarter campaign ENDS TOMORROW.

I had the pleasure of writing a sidequest AND subclass for them, and I'm REALLY excited about all of it. The entire campaign is worth checking out, and I hope you consider checking it out before the campaign ends!

Check out The Red Opera

The Red Opera: Last Days of The Warlock is an extensive, player-driven campaign designed for 5th edition, drawing inspiration from the DiAmorte heavy metal album of the same name, centered upon the oft-overlooked and much-misunderstood class: Warlocks.

Check it out here!

40k Unlocked! New stretch goals: Spell/Monster/Item cards & an Adventure Path! Also I am alive!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 07:15:16 PM

My team said I'm allowed to work again!

Haha, hello, everyone! Thank you so much for being patient with me while I recovered from the incredibly chaotic-but-wonderful 24-hour livestream from Friday/Saturday. My team wanted to make sure I took time to self-care before I dove head-first back into working both my day job and AF, so I did just that. I took today off from my day job to catch up, expecting there to be a lot to cover.

And oh my god, there is a LOT to cover. Here's what we're talking about:

• New Rewards
• Stretch Goals
• Add-ons
• Cryptids Expansion Discussion

So let's get started!

New Rewards

Some of you may have already seen these, but we've added some new rewards!

OH DEAR, OH DEAR, GORGEOUS - Custom Art

At this tier, you'll get not only a piece of beautiful custom art just for you from one of the artists from the Restaurants & Retail book, you'll also get a hardcover version of the book! Artwork is subject to the approval of both Action Fiction and the artists themselves (we won't ask them to do art they aren't comfortable doing, but we WILL try to find an artist willing to draw your commission if possible!).

WHERE'S THE LAMB SAUCE? - Custom Quest

At this tier, one of the writers from Restaurants & Retail will write you a custom, 4k word quest set in the location of your choice, at the level of your choice! This quest will never be published or available anywhere else, and will be designed SPECIFICALLY for your use (of course, you're welcome to do with it as you please!). You also get a hardback book of Restaurants & Retail, so you'll have everything you need to run your quest!

Stretch Goals

You folx literally donated so fast that I could NOT keep up. We smashed TWO stretch goals in the time I've been gone, which has been less than a week. I have spent all morning putting the pieces together and planning for future stretch goals as well. So, here's what I have for you!

At 50k, we'll make an add-on for Spell, Monster, and Item cards! It looks like this add-on will cost about $20 (that's the estimate right now), and it'll include cards for every single spell, monster, and item in Restaurants & Retail. 

At 60k, we'll make the first Adventure Path designed for the Restaurants & Retail campaign setting! This will have four adventures in it, covering 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th level! This will be written by writers who created the material for Restaurants & Retail, and will be available digitally to ALL backers for FREE!

Add-ons

Pins

We're doing pins series 2, and we begin design work on those next week! I'll have previews for y'all as soon as I can! You can add a pin to your pledge for $8, and these will ship with your pledge.

Dice

We've settled on the price point of $20 for these, and they should arrive before hardcovers, near when softcovers arrive. We got the first preview of the inked dice back this morning:

And moving on to sa;oklsadfgosadipvh0
 

HOLD UP Y’ALL IT’S SNAILS, ART DIRECTOR FOR RESTAURANTS & RETAIL HERE--

Snails give me back my keyboard. 

"Shut up, Jaron. The gastropods are talking now."

Well, rude. But I’m clearly powerless to stop you from hijacking this Kickstarter update, so speak now, then back to your shell.

"Look, these dice are good. BUT ARE THEY GUY FIERI GOOD!? ARE THEY SLAMMIN!?"

Snails, we don’t actually have the rights to Guy Fieri, we can’t just--

"Details! I think we should re-do the dice designs and give the people something that screams flamin’ dump truck nachos and flamin’ hawaiian shirts. We should redesign the dice to be transparent, with flames inside them! Libris Arcana (our amazing dice people) already have stuff like that in their catalogue! I’m SURE they can do this!"

Well, I don’t doubt you at all, their catalogue is really--
 

"NO BUTTS, JARON  I’VE ALREADY SENT THE EMAIL! So, new dice on the way! MORE FLAMES! Let's make the backers feel like they’re going to Flavor City with every roll!"

Thank you, Snails, for returning my keyboard. Well, y’all heard it from them. We’ll be doing different dice than this set—dice that would make Guillaume Fierre proud. I’ll let you know when we get a new sample preview together!

Spell/Monster/Item Cards

If we hit 50k, these will be available as a single collected deck, and we anticipate this deck to cost $20 (though this is subject to change). These will be full-color cards, complete with artwork for items and statistics for monsters.

Cryptids Expansion

I'm not certain that we've formally announced it, but we're doing a halloween expansion for our Patreon members! This expansion offers several creatures based on American Cryptids, as well as new items and locations for those creatures! We'll do this each year, exploring new areas as we go. This year is East-coast focused.

I'd love to share more, but if the project manager, Bailey Megrian, found out I was sharing more, she'd find a way to disappear me and hide my body in a bog.

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That's all I have for you for now! Y'all are amazing. Can't wait to cross the next goal with you!

jrmj