State of the Realm: Q4 2020
over 3 years ago
– Mon, Dec 07, 2020 at 06:55:36 PM
Hiya! Hope you're enjoying the burgeoning winter (or whatever season it happens to be where you are).
Please find the Q4 2020 Infinium Game Studio State of the Realm update here.
As I established in the Q2 2020 Realm update earlier in the year, I have honest, updated targets for each and every product in the pipeline. That policy will continue.
We've long established that my ability to estimate is not ideal, but I do enjoy sharing with you my best guess and trying to be as transparent as possible about what's going on, when, and what I'm doing about it.
Accomplishments
2020 certainly has been an enormous year. Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for 5E, for Pathfinder Second Edition, for OSR, and for DCC have all been completed and published. And I even expanded all editions of the Bestiary by an additional 60 monsters, bringing the total to 1,660 monsters, over 33,000 complete statblocks spread over more than 20,000 pages of published content.
As part of that, I established my first-ever formal agreement with another third-party publisher, and got approval to publish the Bestiary for DCC using the Dungeon Crawl Classics logo and official support.
The FlexAI Guidebook was completed and published. The FTEG Solo Adventuring Quickstart, and its accompanying Quickstart Bestiaries for PFRPG, 5E, and P2E, were published.
And more recently, just last week, the Content Conversion Guide was completed and published, along with its companion Excel Conversion Mapping Inventory tool.
All in all, four Silver bestsellers and two Copper bestsellers in the IGS library at this point on DriveThruRPG, including #1 Hottest Small Press, #1 Most Popular Under $5, and #6 Bestselling Overall honors (all for the Content Conversion Guide).
Updated Project Targets
In keeping with the new approach established earlier this year, the State of the Realm update features honest, best-guess assessments of where outstanding work will be completed and fulfilled. I want to remain as transparent as possible, even if that frustrates some people, because as a backer of over 500 indie RPG projects myself, I'd rather have a best-guess that changes, than a vague "I'm working on it" promise.
I want to stress, and thank you for, the overwhelming amount of optimistic, understanding, sympathetic, and generally positive feedback I've received. Most of you seem to be super thrilled; many of you are eager to hear more, and I do respect that some of you are frustrated.
I have always delivered, and I will continue to deliver, as rapidly, and as completely, as I am capable of. I thank you for your patience, now in this bizarre 2020 situation more than ever, and for the nearly 10,000 of you who have received at least one IGS product already, I'm always eager to hear your feedback!
Thank You!
Thank you as always for your patience, support, and constructive feedback. 2020 has been a heck of a year for us all, and yet, IGS has continued to produce a TON of products spanning thousands and thousands of pages and over a dozen books.
We're looking forward to much, much more yet in what has already been a record-breaking year of productivity for our teeny-tiny indie geekfest company. None of this would be remotely possible without you, your support, and your own passion.
So: Thank you!
Onward!
Production Update
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 10:48:32 AM
Hi folks! Hope you're doing well. A quick update as to where things stand.
Pipeline Production Update
Good news: I've finished Volume 1 of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm for OSR, and yesterday, the same for DCC was published. I'm on target to complete the remaining Volume 2 for both systems by Thanksgiving.
This means we're getting much closer to clearing out the backlog of work in the pipeline so I can focus attention on FTEG 2, which I'm very, very excited about.
Thank you as always for your patience and enthusiasm.
Stay safe; stay sane! Onward!
Production Timeline & New Kickstarter: Dark Harbor & FREE Gothic Horror Fiction Novel
over 3 years ago
– Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 08:15:36 PM
Production Timeline
Here's a mini-State of the Realm update: Following the release of v1.1 of Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm which expanded the world's largest bestiary by 60 additional monsters, we continue to make HUGE progress on a number of items in the pipeline.
The remainder of 2020 should see ABRE: OSR/DCC, the Conversion Guide, Monsters of Aquilae, the ABRE Master Index, DO1: Collectors Edition, Mystery of Brushgather Farm, and the Solo Adventuring Toolkit published at minimum. AA3 and other projects that have been long waiting will follow shortly.
I've said it a number of places, but the hugeness of the impact bears underscoring: Aquilae: Bestiary of the Realm consumed more than TWO YEARS more time than I had originally planned, due mostly to a lack of automation where I had anticipated being able to automate things (but my Day Job and COVID certainly didn't help).
With this enormous project now nearly off my plate, I get to focus fully on fulfilling the backlog of committed work, and let me tell you, I'm even more excited to do that than you are to receive it.
That segues us to...
It's Ravenloft meets Planescape, by way of Saw. If that doesn't spark some interest, then skip the rest of this message and have a great weekend.
Between the timing of the season, and the enormity of progress and the tens of thousands of pages of work that's been accomplished lately, I felt the time was right to formally initialize the next thing in line. Check it out here. I'm also switching to an official honest-to-goodness business Kickstarter account for Infinium Game Studio.
A few things of interest here:
1: No Impact to the Pipeline
There will be zero impact to the timeline of existing committed work. Dark Harbor will ONLY deliver AFTER all existing committed work is delivered. I am keenly, keenly aware that I owe a great deal of stuff to a great many people, all of whom have collectively made doing what I love most possible to begin with. I am working as hard as is physically possible to deliver hundreds of pages of content each month, a pace which I hope to keep up going forward.
2: Target of Halloween 2021
It's gothic horror, so launching in October and delivering on Halloween next year makes a helluva lot of thematic sense.
The main reason I'm launching now is that I want to have a lot of artwork in this. The stuff I have in the Kickstarter is representative, but it takes a huge amount of lead time: the dozen or so pieces I have already completed were the result of organizing things with artists over the past 2 years in the background. So I'd love to get a sense of what the collective interest level, and my budget, will allow.
Also, based on my throughput over the last year or so, I fully expect that I completing my entire backlog of work by October 2021 will be entirely feasible, so the timing makes sense from that standpoint as well.
3: Free Novel
Years ago, I finished a horror novel set in the present day situated in the mythology of the Dark Harbor campaign setting. Dark Harbor the novel is not quite the same thing asDark Harbor the RPG concept, not least of which because the former is present-day and the latter is swords and sorcery, but the basic structures are there, and if nothing else, it'll give you a feel for things if you're interested but on the fence.
4: Who Gets What
If you're a backer of Dark Obelisk 2, Gauntlets & Gaslight, or Western Realm Gazetteer, or are otherwise already entitled to "Dark Harbor", fear not: you will automatically receive all digital products from the campaign; no pledge or additional involvement necessary. There's more detail in the Kickstarter campaign description but you get the idea.
FREE Gothic Horror Fiction Novel
Grab your FREE PDF of the Dark Harbor fiction novel here. Despite having published over 50 RPG products spanning tens of thousands of pages, I'm actually somewhat embarrassed and shy about my actual fiction writing, which is why I've only finished 3 novels of which one is entirely unpublished because it's semi-autobiographical, so take it easy on me in the feedback department with this book. :)
Onward!
IGS State of the Realm Q2(ish) 2020
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 11:27:12 AM
Okay, so "Q2" is probably stretching it a bit; the just-published State of the Realm update has been long overdue.
Updated Project Targets
This has been the overwhelming most popular request: for the stuff that's taking longer than expected initially, what's the new vision for timing? In the past, I've tried to avoid saying anything explicit if I wasn't very, very certain; in my management day job, I've usually worked in climates where citing a revised date and then missing that is viewed as worse than just being honest and vague about what a reasonable target might be. But I recognize that this is not a management day job, and that people want to understand, and that a best guess is often better than open-ended ambiguity. So, I've added targets in the SotR update.
I want to stress, and thank you for, the overwhelming amount of optimistic, understanding, sympathetic, and generally positive feedback I've received. Most of you seem to be super thrilled; many of you are eager to hear more, and I do respect that some of you are frustrated.
I have always delivered, and I will continue to deliver, as rapidly, and as completely, as I am capable of. I thank you for your patience, now in this bizarre 2020 situation more than ever, and for the nearly 10,000 of you who have received at least one IGS product already, I'm always eager to hear your feedback!
Thank You!
Thank you as always for your patience, support, and constructive feedback. 2020 has been a heck of a year for us all, and yet, IGS has continued to produce a TON of products spanning thousands and thousands of pages and over a dozen books.
We're looking forward to much, much more yet in what has already been a record-breaking year of productivity for our teeny-tiny indie geekfest company. None of this would be remotely possible without you, your support, and your own passion.
So: Thank you!
Onward!
Production Update & Freebie Fulfillment
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 04:14:59 PM
Hi all! Hope you're enjoying the last few dwindling bits of summer, or whatever season you're experiencing locally.
Production Update
The good news is that a lot of content continues to evolve. This is mostly as a result of codifying and completing other products in the pipeline ahead of FTEG v2.0, for example the recently-published FlexAI Guidebook.
However, I realize that I'm behind schedule--this is hardly surprising given my track record, but still frustrating I'm sure.
Freebie Fulfillment
As a bit of a balm to that burn, but also as a means of illustrating some of what is in store in the final product, I've just sent out complimentary PDF copies of some of our latest products:
The QuickStart in particular is a great preview of the sort of thinking and approach that's going into the FTEG v2.0. Think of what's in there, times hundreds, and you'll get a good sense of what we're looking for in the completed product.
Enjoy, compliments of an overloaded and very stressed-out, but nevertheless deeply passionate and wildly optimistic and super excited, indie producer. :)
Onward!
