Sig – Moving Quickly
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jul 09, 2017 at 08:30:35 PM

Hello to the fine ‘venturers, bashers, and random wanderers who backed the Sig Kickstarter. It’s been a month since our last update, so I wanted to give folks a status update on the project.  

Printed and in Transit  

I have been working with the fine folks at Kraken Print to produce the offset print run of Sig, and they have given some great news. All of the books should now have been printed, and they will be shipping to North America shortly. From there, I will be redirecting those books to our fulfillment partners, who will in turn ship out all of the beautiful books you have been waiting for. The estimates I have are that the books should reach our fulfillment partners in 4-5 weeks.  

Unfortunately, this means that we are cutting it quite close in order to have our books ready for GenCon, and our fulfillment partners may not have them all sent out before that convention occurs. If these don’t get shipped out prior to GenCon, I will be happy to allow folks to pick up their copies there! I will let you know via another backer update if we are going down that route.  

Speaking of GenCon, I plan on running a number of sessions of Sig there. I’m running one session on Thursday morning (https://www.gencon.com/events/122597) and one on Sunday morning (https://www.gencon.com/events/122598), as well as a number of smaller sessions at Games on Demand. Please feel free to sign up and join me in the planar fun!  

Quickstart Ready!  

In our last backer update, I told you that the Quickstart was being revised and edited. While a few minor personal issues and holidays slowed me down, I have finally finished the free quickstart for everyone to enjoy. This is a print and play document with 6 pre-generated characters, rules references, and a ton of other handy resources to help you run a one-shot of Sig. You can find it over at http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/216042/Sig-Quickstart--The-Shard-of-Empire while we all wait to get our physical copies of the book.  

 Happy Gaming!

Sig Stretch Goals - June Edition
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 11:07:06 PM

It’s been a bit over a month since my last post, so I wanted to provide a bit of a status update for this kickstarter project. The books are currently still at the printers, and I have been getting some solid progress on the various stretch goals.  

Stretch Goal 1A – Sig Quickstart (In Progress)  

I have been working on the Quickstart over the last few weeks, and it’s been an excellent challenge. I have designed the characters and the tutorial section to introduce both the setting and the rules, so that people can start playing for the first time with the least friction possible. Each of the characters are designed to focus on different about the setting, from the character with a complicated, extended family to the political assassin. I have just finished writing the main text for the Quickstart, and I have sent it off for editing. As soon as I deal with those edits, I will lay out the document and make it available for everyone to enjoy. We should have a quickstart out within the next few weeks.  

Stretch Goal 1B – Roll20 Character Sheets (Complete)  

As part of the first stretch goal, I also promised to prepare custom character sheets for Roll20, so that folks could play games online. I was originally planning on designing these myself, but I came to recognize that I needed to recruit a professional. For that reason, I reached out to the excellent Nathanaël Terrien, who crafted a beautiful sheet for us to enjoy. It’s now publically available on Roll20.net, listed as “Sig: The City Between”. It had dropdowns listing the various factions/powers, displays tons of useful content in the chat when you make your rolls, and is beautiful to boot. I recommend you set up a test campaign and take a look at what Nathanaël put together. You can start your online campaign today!  

 

Stretch Goal 2 & 3 – Reference / Origin Decks (Planning)

I have been outlining the content which I would present in each of the two card decks I offered as part of the stretch goals. After a careful examination of the content, I think I have found a better approach to move forward.  

The Reference Deck will be expanded to a total of 90 cards. These will provide you with all of the key reference information for the setting, and will also allow you to play the game entirely without character sheets. It will include a full process for card-based character creation, and double as an excellent randomizer for the GM. This functionally will contain much of the content that was originally designed for the Origin deck.  

The second deck will instead become an NPC deck, which will have a cleverer name. Rather than basic reference information, it will contain a host of NPCs and locations within the City Between. My current plan is for this deck to be 54 cards, but this might be adjusted based on how the content comes together.  

Stretch Goal 4 – Freebooters (Planning)  

I just received my special edition copy of Blades in the Dark, and it’s stunning. After devouring every word in that elegant tome, I will set my mind to Freebooters. I have a few interesting ideas for possible directions to head down, but this will take plenty of design work to do it right. While I have been waiting, I secured formal permission from John Harper to proceed with producing Freebooters using the core Blades in the Dark engine. I will be using the SRD for the game system which is currently being finalized by OneSeven Design and Evil Hat Productions. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy playing on Roll20!

Backerkit in Prep
about 7 years ago – Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 09:43:52 AM

Hey folks, Now that I have gotten the book the printers, I am concentrating on the other elements of the kickstarter campaign. I am currently setting up backerkit so that I can collect addresses, give folks a chance to modify their pledge levels, and generally administer the project.  

We will give you a heads-up before we send the survey so that you can watch for it. You will not need to create a BackerKit account to answer your survey. The invitation email will contain a link to your personal survey. Quick responses will be helpful to allow us to plan, but you will be able to adjust your responses over the next months  

If you need to change your survey responses, add or remove add-ons, or update your shipping information, you can click on the link in your survey email again or request your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page. (This page will only start working after we send the surveys out.) If you prefer, you can just message me and give me your information, but answering your survey will help us get your rewards out to you quicker. BackerKit helps us save lots of time by streamlining the survey process, automating data organization, and providing us with pledge management software to make it easy to process your pledge reward shipments.  

If you used Facebook to log into your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey link will be sent to the email you used for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you'd prefer to use, please message me.  

Thanks, and Welcome to Sig!

Sig is to the Printers!
about 7 years ago – Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 11:53:47 PM

Since our last update, I have been working away at revising the final version of Sig. I am pleased to report that I have just sent the files off the printers for their prepress magic. The revision process led to a number of small graphical changes, clarifications, and general text improvements. This also resulted in a few minor rules modifications, adjusting how Influence and Harm work mechanically. I wanted to take the time to fix the issues before they got printed in a thousand books. I plan on uploading the revised PDFs via DriveThruRPG within the next couple of days so you will all have access, but here is the sneak peek.  

Rules changes  

The Harm system has always been a little bit of a pain to explain, and it was a touch too fiddly in play compared to the benefits it provided. As such, I have modified how this works in play. 

• There is a single harm track with six levels, which runs beside the attributes. 
• If you have a single level of harm, you are prevented from rolling a D20 at any time and are limited to a D12.
• Each additional level of harm removes your next highest die. You now always suffer a level of Harm when you win a conflict. You can’t pay the price of victory with influence any longer. 
• If you choose to suffer a level of Harm in a conflict, you gain +3 on your roll instead of a mere +2.
• Interludes, which allow you to remove harm, now cost you 3 influence. 

 As a net effect of all of this, you should see more frequent Interludes, with less Influence being stored up at any time. Harm should also be easier to track in play, and result in much more enjoyable games for all. 

New Map 

Some of you named the streets, and I reshaped the Map of Sig to accommodate those new streets. I have reworked the Atlas of Sig to make it clearer and more useful in play. This was important, since it’s being printed on the inside endpapers of the book! 

New Sheets 

One fine backer pointed out that the old character sheet design seemed at odds with the new look of Sig. I took that to heart, and revised all of the relevant sheets to match our new format. Take a look at the new character sheet! 

Thank you so much for your continued support. I can’t wait to get this printed and in your hands. I can’t wait! 

Jason Pitre, Genesis of Legend Publishing.

Mapping a Course
about 7 years ago – Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 08:46:54 PM

The maps of Sig are relatively complex affairs, and I have been working hard over the past few weeks on refining them. This has included a lot of work on the background, tweaking neighborhoods and establishing a robust explicit road network. This means that I have all of the essential building blocks for creating a visually attractive map of the city and each of the neighborhoods. It may not look like much right now, but the map below is a sign of progress. 

I have just contacted all of the Benefactor and Faction tier backers so that they can submit names for the various streets of Sig. In the meantime, I will continue to adapt this map into a more visually attractive form, and start the detailed labeling process. When this is done, we will have a fully detailed map for the endpapers of the book as well as for the individual neighborhood maps.  

I am also going to be making all of the relevant text edits to the core manuscript, so that everything is ready to go to press. It's close!