Don't Forget Your Towel + Playtest Surveys!
about 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 06, 2020 at 03:05:55 AM

Hey Everyone! 

Quick update today as we move into the middle stages of the campaign.

Don't Forget Your Towel!

The second part of the Wildsea Actual Play by the crew over at Don't Forget Your Towel is up now! If you're curious about The Wildsea in action you owe it to yourself to check out this lovingly produced and edited podcast! The crew is a talented and lovely crew of kiwis from New Zealand who put a lot of value into their performances including voices, ambient music, and sound effects! 

I had the privilege of listening to the raw unedited audio and I was hooked! Had it on the entire day. This second session features a classic dungeon delve where you can clearly see Felix's ludology as a Trail of Cthulhu GM. 

Check it out if you get the chance! And please, don't forget to subscribe and share if you like it! 

Playtest Surveys! 

We also just completed drafting a pair of feedback surveys to help us better iterate future editions of The Wildsea. 

Firefly Survey - https://forms.gle/TG2FZrYYqowePyo47 

Player Survey - https://forms.gle/9JmwTyQD7uAs5AfP7 

If you've played The Wildsea,  please take a minute and fill out the appropriate survey.   If you do, you'll be credited as a playtester in the final edition of the game! 

Also, if you have any questions/comments/feedback on how to make the survey better, let me know!

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Alright, thanks everyone! Only $1200 until Felix gets that raise! 

Let's get it! 

Ray 

Get Ready for Something Big
about 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 05, 2020 at 05:18:36 PM

A short but important update this time!

I've had a lot of feedback over the past weeks, and one of the most consistent topics has been people sorry to have missed out on the art-creation funding tiers. They went fast - which is great! - but it did leave some people disappointed.

It's time to rectify that, at least a little. :)

After conversation with Ray and our monster artist, Shmeckerel, we've decided to...

• Raise the number of slots open for people to contribute a monster.
• Possibly raise the number of slots for people to snag a cameo. 
• And to add a whole new tier - Leviathans!

Though limited in number, backers at the Leviathan tier will be able to work with me to design a titanic creature, a living legend that holds dominance over a swathe of the rustling waves. Leviathans are expected to get a full page of art and text to themselves too, as befits their colossal status!

Details on the precise time these new slots and options go live will be posted soon. There's at least a few days to go yet - we don't want to catch anybody off guard. 

I look forward to your creativity!

- Felix

Additional Stretch Goals
about 4 years ago – Mon, Nov 02, 2020 at 09:34:29 PM

Hey Everyone! 

I'm back from my desert trip this weekend and diving back into all of our various projects, including this wildly successful Kickstarter which is now officially the largest Mythopoeia's ever run - pretty amazing! 

Today's update is to announce the rest of the Stretch Goals that we think will carry us through to the end of the campaign. Like Felix said, we're extremely cognizant of adding new content or things that may scale unexpectedly in both time and costs. That said, many of these are 'soft' Stretch Goals that distribute the additional resources we may raise in a way that's hopefully transparent and honest. 

At $60,000 we'll set aside a portion of the funds to subsidize the shipping fees for the project. This will hopefully enable us to lower shipping rates by $1-2 dollars per package, depending on a number of factors. Internally, what this means is that no matter what we will allocate a portion of our funds raised to shipping costs, which we'll then pass the savings unto you when it comes time to charge and fulfill via Backerkit. 

At $65,000 we're going to pay Wildsea creator and designer Felix Isaacs more! The majority of funds raised from  the last stretch goal to this one will go directly to Felix's pockets in addition to his overall cut of the campaign and future sales. 

At $70,000 we'll be able to raise the per word rate of the various designers and writers we are bringing on board to the Wildsea (which I promise we'll announce soon in a future update. Freelance game design is not exactly a lucrative profession but we're committed to building a bigger tent and providing opportunities to others when and where  we can.

At $75,000 we'll be able to design and manufacture a set of custom  wooden Wildsea Dice which will be available to purchase as an Add-On via BackerKit. This is something we wanted to have ready for the start of the campaign but alas simply ran out of time. Nonetheless, reaching this tier will give us the resources to begin the process of making these dice in earnest. 

At $85,000 we'll include the last content update for the core book: The Farthest Reaches. Consider this an expansion of the Arconautics chapter already unlocked detailing the furthest corners of the Wildsea. More obscure content, to be announced if we get here! 

Finally, our penultimate goal at $100,000 will allow us to lower shipping rates yet again, reducing the rates by another $1-2 per package. In the interim, the funds raised to get this tier will allow us to pay the principles of the project just that little bit more :)

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Okay folks, that's it from us! Felix is hard at work writing while we juggle the community and I'm handling boring business bits of the campaign. By campaign's close we're going to put together a production timeline so you can see exactly how we'll be spending the months ahead. 

In the meantime, come say hello on the official Discord! We pretty much have it open all day and you'll be able to ask us questions directly there. 

Until next time! 

Ray 

Stretch Goals, Scope and Towels
about 4 years ago – Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 01:08:23 AM

Hello people, Felix here!

Having just finished running a game for a few of the new backers over on the Wildsea Discord, now seemed like a good time to post an update. What I didn't expect was that the update I was planning, a thank you for helping us reach the 45k stretch goal, would instead have to be converted into an even larger thank you for us almost reaching the 50k stretch goal as well.

It should go without saying that both Ray and I are absolutely bowled over by the support you've given us over the last four days of the Kickstarter. But before I delve into our plans for the immediate future here's a little something from our character artist Omercan Cirit, just to say...

Now then, onto the numbers. 

Scope

When Ray and I were working out the scope for the Wildsea project, we came to the conclusion that there were two numbers that mattered more than any others. 

The first of these was $15k, our initial Kickstarter target. This represented our bare minimum intake for a viable printed book, an RPG that didn't have everything I wanted in it, but that would be out in the world and act as a solid basis for future work if the opportunity ever arose. From this 15k I would recoup the monet spent on art over the past few years, the artists themselves would be paid for a few extra pieces and we'd have enough left over to print the physical copies. Nobody goes into the indie TTRPG scene to get rich (or at least, I hope they don't), and we'd likely have made extremely little in terms of actual profit, but we'd have that physical copy sorted. We were okay with that as a baseline, but we were obviously hoping for more.

The second of these most important numbers was $45k. 

On the surface it was a stretch goal that unlocked our second bonus and base pay rate for the artists involved in the project, but 'behind the curtain' there was a little more going on - 45k represented the point at which we would have all of the funds necessary for what I suppose you could call the 'maximal' Wildsea. A high quality hardback book, a professional layout, full-colour art and content from guest writers and collaborators that we'd sourced to bring differing views, skillsets and experiences to the rustling waves.

We weren't sure if we would ever actually hit it, but we hoped that by campaign close we might just have scraped by.

I think it's safe to say that we did more than just scrape by. 

But with an early success like we just hadn't imagined, we needed to have a hard conversation about the scope of the project. What more could we add, what more could we do, at what point was it ethical to raise pay not just for artists, but for ourselves? 

This conversation is still in process. There's a lot to consider. But here's what we've decided so far. 

1. We Want to Avoid Content Bloat

I love writing for the Wildsea, but as some point additional writing becomes less of a bonus and more of a detriment. Every new concept or element needs art, layout and page space. It represents a higher barrier to entry for the casual player. And, perhaps most importantly, it adds to the production time and potentially delays the release of the actual product.

There are many more things I *could* write about for the Wildsea for post-50k tiers, but I've instead focused on the single consistent element that playtesters have been asking for more of since the very earliest games - more ways to explore the world of the Wildsea. Airships for tackling the terrifying expanse of the open sky. Submersibles (or whatever we might end up calling such ships) for delving down to the lowest reaches of the Sink and the Drown, maybe even down to the Darkness-Under-Eaves itself. Additional options to engage crews that choose these unusual methods of travel, and clearer guidance for the Firefly. 

2. We Want to Leave Room to Explore

For players and Fireflies alike. The Wildsea is a game about building and developing a shared space as you play, in terms of culture, location, history, bonds - defining too much of the world makes that harder and harder to achieve. Even with the new 'Roots and Sky' content goal for airships and submersibles, we're offering options for how one might travel, but leaving the details sparse on what they'll find once they're there.

3. We Want to Maintain Honest and Ethical Financial Practices 

One of the reasons I enjoy working with Ray is that we share a similar financial vision, especially when it comes to creative work. There's a reason we've had two Art Raise stretch goals - the artists have done incredible work during unconventional times, and they should be rewarded for that. 

We'd also like to earn more money from the project as payment for the time we've put in, but we had to ask ourselves - did we want that more than additional art, or a more satisfying end product? No. But now we're on track to surpass our final original stretch goal it looks like the chance to raise our own working rates might become a reality. 

4. We Want to Pass Some Savings to You Where Possible

Particularly in terms of shipping costs. As someone who, due to their living situation, has backed exlusively at the pdf tier for games for the last four or five years, seeing the prospective shipping prices for the final book was a sobering moment. 

If we can get to a point where it's viable for us to cover some of the shipping charges, reducing the overall physical backer spend, we will. In Ray's exact words "It's what I'd want as a consumer", and I agree with him. 

Anyway, that all got rather heavy and serious for a moment there - let's aim to end with something lighter. 

Don't Forget Your Towel

We've linked them on the main page, but they really deserve one here as well. The amazing people over at Don't Forget Your Towel rushed through their usual process of reviewing, playing and editing a fantastic short series of Wildsea content. With Ryan and I along for the ride they spent multiple episodes covering the delve into an ancient spit of temple-stone and dealing with the direct consequences of their exploration. We were playing across three distinct time zones with only a handful of weeks before the launch of the Kickstarter to pull it all together, and they didn't just deliver - they excelled. 

If you've got the time, I highly recommend giving their content a listen.

And they gave us a custom theme song. A theme song! 

Anyway, this has been an unexpectedly long one, so I should probably close it up. Thank you all again for supporting us - it's a long and wild road ahead, but we definitely have great company.

- Felix

The Beasts of the Rustling Waves
about 4 years ago – Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 11:35:16 PM

So, since I last updated you yesterday we have definitely hit some more stretch goals. :)

First off, another thank you - support for the Wildsea keeps rolling in, and there are now just over 600 of you helping us bring this weird treetop sea into the world. I think I can confidently speak for all of the contributors here when I say we are incredibly grateful. 

I won't give you a run-down of all the stretch goals we've met so far, and what that means. Instead I'll be taking a little time over the next few updates to focus on the ones that bring the largest amount of new work to the project, and for that we'll start with Shmeckerel, our most recent art hire and the new master of Wildsea monsters. 

In fact, I'll let her introduce herself...

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Hey everyone! I’m Shmeckerel, aka Katy Peacock, and will be your monster artist for the upcoming ride. As Felix said, we cannot thank you enough for your contributions, and I’ll tell you why I’m so jazzed.

After a roughly 5yr hiatus from doing art to focus on my health-related career, I started drawing again in June 2020. That was a rough restart - art is a bit like riding a bike, but the bike had been left to rust for half a decade, so the start was haphazard. To get back into the groove, I focused on drawing things I love drawing best: monsters. These monsters were actually for some homebrew D&D 5e beasties I made with my friend, just a fun little gift to the community. 

One of these monsters happened to be the Draxolotl, a big axolotl-dragon hybrid. Unbeknownst to me, the Draxolotl had made its way across the internet onto the Geek Native website, where our hero-of-the-hour Felix had stumbled upon it, and reached out to me.

Let me tell you, 4 months ago if you said I’d be part of such an amazing group of truly inspiring people realizing a fully kickstarted project, I’d probably suggest you take a tylenol and go to bed. But from the second I became aware of the project, it was immediately obvious the blood, sweat, and tears that was put into the world of The Wildsea. I fell in love instantly with the setting, lore, and obviously, the monsters (like, have you seen the Tzelicrae? WHAT THE HELL). 

Being a little nobody hobby artist from Canada, I’m so, so incredibly grateful to be pulled into this wild ride. And the fact that we hit the bestiary stretch goal? Oh I was jumping off the walls excited. I’m gonna draw SO MANY MONSTERS for you folks. So yeah, I’m jazzed. And we have all of you to thank for it. So sit tight, hands and feet inside the ship, and get ready for all the creepies and crawlies I’m throwing your way!

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... And there you go!

So to celebrate reaching our bestiary tier, here's a little sneak peek at some more of Shmeckerel's art for the Wildsea - a reimagining of the classic pinwolf, one of the earliest playtest creatures that crews ever faced. 

Before I sign off for this update I also want to mention the less visually stunning but no less important side of the Bestiary tier  - paying artists more. 

The artists working on the Wildsea project have breathed so much life into it over the years, it honestly would not exist without them. As Ray previously mentioned, we're directing a large portion of the money we make with this kickstarter towards them - not just to fund more art, but as a little something extra for the work they've put in so far. 

And with that, and the traditional extra thank you for reading this and supporting us, I'll leave you for the night. 

It's been a very, very good day. 

- Felix