Good day! It’s your first monthly update! We’ve got a lot of progress to share with you on the RPG, but I did want to spend some time addressing some feedback from the last update.
Mercenary pack pre-order
I am happy to report here that all mercenary pack shipments have arrived or will arrive soon at all fulfillment centers, and we are ready to provide more concrete information on fulfillment.
Before doing that, I would like to first acknowledge our lack of communication on fulfilling this pre-order and apologize for that. This was not a part of this Backerkit campaign, which is why you weren’t seeing updates about it here, but you also weren’t seeing updates about it elsewhere, so it is perfectly understandable to look for updates here and be frustrated by a general lack of information, especially when we had advertised the packs through these updates.
Our policy moving forward, with both this and future pre-orders, is to provide more prompt updates by email when timing on delivery changes. We will be sending out an email update on the mercenary packs to all pre-orders shortly, but we wanted to provide a fulfillment update here for you as well:
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AU/NZ: All orders have been added to their queue and are expected to start shipping out before the end of week.
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CA: Shipping will start next week on Monday, with all orders shipping out by the end of next week.
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EU/UK/RoW: The container has arrived in the EU, with expected delivery to the fulfillment center on Nov. 7. Barring any container delivery issues, we expect orders to start shipping next week.
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US: Shipping will start on Thursday, and the majority of orders are expected to be shipped by early next week.
Delivery timelines
Another thing I wanted to address was the sentiment of wanting a specific timeline on delivery—wanting to know when you will actually receive the projects that are still outstanding. This is completely understandable, and if we had enough information on all the variables in the process to give you a timeline that was 100% accurate and was guaranteed not to change, I would love nothing more than to give that to you.
Unfortunately, there are just too many variables. At this time, it isn't possible for us to confidently share a timeline without a very real risk of creating further disappointment. Our policy moving forward is simply to provide you with as much information as we can on where we are in the project and what still needs to be done, so that you can see progress is being made. Only once we have entered production and we have solid timelines from our manufacturers, freight companies, and fulfillment partners will we be able to give you an estimate on delivery dates that we can be confident in.
Support tickets
And the final issue to address is support tickets. I know this has been a pain point for a lot of people, and I am sorry. Between fulfillment of Gloomhaven and other issues like the mercenary pack delays, we were hit by a high volume of requests that we did not handle as well as we could have.
We are happy to announce that our support team has put in the effort to resolve the full backlog of tickets and get us to a place of less than 24 hour turn-around time, but I also wanted to share how we are improving things for the future:
- We’ve set up additional reporting on support tickets that give us a better view of how things are going so we can react more quickly when it comes to things like bringing on additional temp help during peak times.
- We're working with our international partners to get direct access to fulfillment data so we don’t have to contact multiple different support channels for each ticket.
- We're also looking into additional methods of ticket filtering for more efficient resolutions.
If you have a new issue or an outstanding one that you don’t feel has been resolved, please reach out to
[email protected] so we can take care of it for you.
Minis
We continue to make progress with the miniatures project, though there is nothing new to report this month. We expect to see more substantial progress in the coming months and will have more to report in a future update.
RPG
We’ve got a couple of cool things to share with you on the RPG, so let’s talk about progress on our major outstanding efforts. I also just want to once again note that this is the top priority for everyone on the team who is working on it, and we are doing our best to get this all together quickly, while also maintaining a high-quality presentation.
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Ability cards: Layout and editing of all ability cards (which are included in the deluxe set) has been completed, and the first thing we wanted to share with you here is the spread of cards from everyone’s favorite rock thrower, the Cragheart!
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Art Layout: Arch here! I wanted to help demystify the “art layout” process for the RPG book. This is a process that I direct and coordinate with the help of Layne as well as our illustration collaborators. The focus is to make the book’s content look excellent while adjusting for printing requirements and overall usability. Some of this work carries through the whole book, like the filigree borders of the spreads. Other things need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Different information sometimes can warrant a different kind of presentation for both aesthetics and usability. It’s so much more than just “making things look pretty” (though making things look pretty is an endeavor near and dear to my own heart). The process also involves a lot of technical knowledge and problem solving.
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Adventure chapter: I’m adding a new element to this list that I think is substantial enough to discuss here. The adventure included in the book has 25 scenes and 21 potential combats. While the rest of the book is largely art, text blocks, and tables, the adventure is more akin to the scenario book from the board game, with all the maps and extra information required. All the text and information is in its final draft, and layout is underway, but the layout process will be its own dedicated effort.
Community spotlight
As part of these new updates, we'd also like to spend some time each month to highlight some of the great videos, podcasts, and other art that has come out of it. This month, I want to give a shout-out to Youtuber Mahgatis, who is putting out a series of excellent, informative videos deep-diving each class in Gloomhaven. So far, he’s put together videos on the starting six, plus three locked classes. Here’s his video on the Cragheart:
10 years of Gloomhaven
A little over ten years ago, I put up an ambitious project on Kickstarter called Gloomhaven, and it drastically altered the course of my life in the best way possible. It was because of those initial backers, and the entire community that grew around them, that I was able to live my dream job designing games and build a company that now employs six other people who are all amazing and talented, as well as provides opportunities to countless other contractors.
These games—this world—would not exist without you, and for that, I can never thank you enough. Thank you for making the world of Gloomhaven what it is today and allowing us to continue to make cool things in it 10 years after we first started. I know we’ve stumbled a bit lately, but we are committed to improving our shortcomings and delivering fantastic products in an effort to truly show our appreciation of your support.
So that's going to do it for this update. I know there was some understandable resistance to moving to a monthly schedule, but I hope the content of this update speaks for itself, and it is a little more clear why we thought the shift would be a net positive. I hope you found it informative, and I’ll catch you next month with more!
