UPDATE!
Hello my friends!!!!
Sorry for the radio silence this past month, I have not stopped working on getting everything together for The Epic of Dreams, but have instead been doubling down.
Timeline
Right now, this is our timeline:
I’m still finishing the adventure zine booklet, but we’re likely to have that finished by the end of next week.
I still have to figure out the literature piece we're going to provide with this Kickstarter release. I have 4 separate epic poems that are finished I can choose among to release for this. Whichever one we end up doing I'll need to re-read and do a light grammar edit to ensure its quality.
There are also like 3 minor edits I've been putting off to The Epic of Dreams just because I've been working on the adventure zine - just resizing one art piece, adding in one rules text line, and double checking a third area. Nothing major, probably changes only I would notice.
After that, we'll be finalizing our budget and extra financing, which may take up to a week. As soon as that settles, we are going to be able to press the PRINT and SEND buttons on everything.
If you live in either of my Albany or Rochester communities in New York State, I'll be delivering your pledge personally (for those who know me personally and "live around the corner").
The rest of the fulfillment will be handled by Exalted Funeral.
More on the adventure zine; I had to scrap the prior adventure and make a new one because it was causing me burnout.
Instead, we’re presenting a different adventure inspired by the wonders of the Amazon rainforest, exploring the themes of mortality, betrayal, the circle of life, ancient grudges, and experiencing the inexplicable.
The Ire of Jaguar Man
The Ire of Jaguar Man is a pointcrawl adventure through the Valley of the Golden Sun (not Arizona, but you get the idea) where the Heroes aid a cursed tribe of humans perform their bicentennial ritual at the Grotto of the Clouds.
The only problem is, their sun god - spoken of as “Jaguar Man” - is still angry at them for their forefathers’ transgressions, and is turning every shaman from the tribe into statues of gold.
The Heroes will discover the virile spirit of the rainforest, and all its bizarre beauties and dangers, trying to evade the Jaguar Man’s wrath at every step.
The structure for each part of the adventure is finalized, as well as most of the text content.
Ire of the Jaguar Man features epic heroic trials, an active and animated environment, narrative exploration procedures designed for dramatic roleplay, and mysteries of the Americas.
The final of this map image will be incredibly large, and when zoomed in, will have each of the locations of the pointcrawl illustrated as a gameable area. Most of the 'art' for this zine will be contained in this image.
This adventure is a portal into the future of our offerings - we hope to supply full-color supplement booklets that are immersive, and art-forwards, using the art as a part of the Language of Lore - the game rules of the Epic, communicated visually, kinda like our Circle logo.
With this adventure, you’ll be able to describe the images you see in the book to set each scene, bringing you along for the ride just as much as your Hero players.
As well as this, The Ire of Jaguar Man will feature several Circle invocation diagrams that are 1-page spreads that function as an entire engine for whatever the theme at hand is;
This spread will feature either 40 or 60 various creatures of the rainforest, presented as a food chain in motion. With a quick invocation, the singer will be able to describe surrounding events as the wildlife eat each other, an animated scene as opposed to a static setting. This also functions as a "wandering monster" table in a pinch.
With most of these invocations, there'll be one or more focal questions answered on the outside, with some word lists and other reference aids on the inside, like questions concerning numbers, size, distance, etc, 1-20.
Although we said prior that the adventure zine was going to be in A5, for this zine it’s really only financially viable for us at the moment to print it full-color in A6.
I’m really excited about exploring the full-color A6 space as a tool for storytelling and immersive presentation, and I really hope you enjoy Ire of the Jaguar Man as much as I've had making it.
Burnout
These past 2 months have been a lot of juggling my new dog business, paid art commissions for other people, and other freelancing opportunities that I’ve needed to prioritize. I haven’t had the ability to prioritize this Kickstarter as I have wanted to, which I regret (The update I wanted to give was the update saying your packages were in the mail).
The patterns of my life have been consistently working through nights and weekends, either trying to get ahead on paid work to create margin to finish this project, or the opposite, making headway with these final stages, and getting behind in my finances. This cycle hasn't been the healthiest, it has not been sustainable how I've been doing it, and I have been taking new steps to slow down and work at a healthier pace.
It would be amazing for me if this project COULD just be finished and you all could just have it! It would take so much off of my plate and allow me to just focus on my new dogsitting business, instead of feeling like I need to go full aggro on each front at once.
But we’re not there yet, so we just have to keep working until the book is in your hands.
In spite of this burnout, I'm really confident and looking forwards to finishing this project well, and being able to enjoy it myself after the Basilisk has finally landed.
Updates
The only things I'm working on now is this kickstarter and my other "day job" work.
Because we're at this late stage in the process, I'm hoping that we'll be moving into a new pace with updates that are organically closer to a weekly or bi-weekly pace, just because each part of the fulfillment process bears its own series of milestones.
So, hopefully I'll see you in a week!
But if you don't hear from me in an exact week, please know I'm still working on everything.
I haven't stopped.
Much Love!
Drew
P.S. We're only relaunching our regular online content after this Kickstarter is done and in the mail. Which, we’re hoping, will be soon.