Art Updates & Remaining Items
over 5 years ago – Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 09:42:54 PM

Hello All!

Art Progress! That's the bulk of this update. We've taken snapshots of the tokens (which need formatting and sizing yet), objects and maps below! The last asset remaining is the overland map of the Lost City, the central location of the module (the entirety of Act 2 takes place there).

Unfortunately, the Lion's Vault module is not yet completed.

Remaining Tasks Include:

• Formatting Tokens for use with VTTs
• Completion and review of the overland maps
• Review the Pathfinder version of the module (already copy edited)
• Format the module
• Deliver PDFs & Digital Assets
• Deliver Print Copies

As always, feel free to reach out with questions, comments, or concerns. Our apologies for the continued delays, and thanks, as always, for your patience.

Best,

The 2CGaming Team

Light Update, Some Progress
over 5 years ago – Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 03:25:46 PM

Hello All!

As mentioned previously, updates are going to be relatively brief until we start moving to the delivery, printing, and shipping updates. Unfortunately, the Lion's Vault module is not yet completed.

Our cartographer is working on completion of the battlemaps and world maps. Our token artist has been battling through a series of technical challenges that have slowed her production of tokens until recently. As evidenced by our inability to hit our last deadline, delivery estimates are difficult to predict at this point. When we move into the formatting stage (which we've now been through numerous times), we'll provide an updated digital and PDF delivery schedule.

While the project is not yet finished, the manuscript is complete. This means that once the artwork concludes, we'll be able to put it all together. It's been written, reviewed, copy edited, and is ready for layout and presentation.

As always, feel free to reach out with questions, comments, or concerns. Our apologies for the continued delays!

Best,

The 2CGaming Team

Schedule Update - End of Month Release
over 5 years ago – Sat, Oct 06, 2018 at 11:32:12 PM

Thanks all around for your patience - it's time for an update and a schedule.

Maps

We're very excited to be working with a new cartographer on this project - Meditating Munky (as we've mentioned in a previous post). He's been working through the various maps for the city in Act 2 and it's coming along swimmingly:

We've been working with him on both the maps and the objects for this, and are looking forward to putting these together - both in the book and as digital packs for those of you picking up the Game Assets.

Schedule

We will have the PDFs and Game Assets to you by the end of October! Our remaining components include copy editing (in progress), token art (in progress), and map art (see above - in progress), and we are on track to get this digitally delivered by the end of the month.

Physical copies usually take a month beyond that to check quality, print, package, and ship, so expect those at the end of November.

We'll be locking down shipping information with the release of the PDF and Game Assets - so if you want to make changes to your shipping addresses, please do so before then (we'll put out another reminder update for this as well).

Our Apologies

Finally, we want to express our thanks for your continued patience with this project - and our apologies on the delayed schedule. Please continue to reach out with any questions, comments, or concerns - either through Kickstarter or discord.

While unrelated to the Fate of the Forebears campaign arc, we're going to be shipping softcover booklets of another of our projects - the Giant Runesmith - to all of our print backers alongside the physical copies of Lion's Vault. Thanks again for your patience while we work through the process to bring you the third module in this series.

Best,

The 2CGaming Team

Illustrations & Updates - Close, but not there yet
about 6 years ago – Mon, Apr 09, 2018 at 01:22:27 AM

Hello all. Cutting to the chase here, we're back with updates but no definitive expected deadline for the project. Thank you again for your continued patience as we get this project done, *done, *done*!

Illustrations

Jason has finished up the final illustrations for the module, which include the two here: the Herald of the Ebon flame, and the dragon Geruganan.

The Herald draws some inspiration from the Bodak, but couples the desiccating gaze with telekinetic tendrils to grapple and force one's eyes open, staring into the beyond. This thing is pretty nasty, and speaks to the corruption that befell the Nartheneen to bring their race to their knees.

A recurring antagonist through Lion's Vault, Geruganan appears in Acts 1 and 2, assailing the caravan en route to the Mirrored Steps, where they later meet him in Act 2. The dragon, well-adapted to life in the wastes, has voluntarily subjected itself to the various time-dilation effects in the warping desert, resulting in a juvenile brain inside an ancient and powerful body. An interesting opportunity for both combat and conversation.

Writing

We're pleased to announce that, after much writing, brainstorming, and rethinking, the writing for the Lion's Vault is complete! This project ended up rather larger than expected, as much of the Nartheneen background, hierarchy, and sociopolitical structure needed creation in this module to appropriately present the ruins of their city. We're hoping that this manifests in more of the groundwork laid before the next module, but as always, our sincere apologies for the delay.

The completion here brings the most-ambitious portion of the module to a close, the "Megadungeon" of the Mirrored Steps (or the Lost City). We've put in a good deal of time thinking through how to approach this classic challenge and found what we believe to be a solid balance between random encounters, well-defined paths, and sandbox that should allow the game to feel directed, but with plenty of room for choice and randomness.

Other Components

Objects, Tokens, and Maps are in-progress, and are able to be fully-scoped with the finalization of the writing. These are all fairly light portions of the project, so we're hoping to cut through them quickly.

General Notes & Next-Steps

In the interest of transparency, we're pushing hard on this project, but there are a couple of other projects that require our attentions as well that we've been devoting some time to. A number of personal hiccups (moving, family health, and career changes, most notably) during the same time as the the development of this and other projects early on has spread the resources of our "backup plans" thin. While this is a great learning experience to help us avoid these types of issues in the future, it comes at the cost of your patience, and for this, we thank you sincerely and apologize again. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions, concerns, or issues, either publicly or privately, and we'll do our level best to address them. We've a strong commitment to continued product quality, and have been taking steps to ensure that, despite the delays, the finished product meets and exceeds the standards of its forebears.

Things personally seem to be settling, and without additional unforeseen events in the last month or so, progress has been made on all fronts and the end is in sight. Expect more in the way of open communication via comments, and an update in early May hopefully with either the PDF releases of the project or an announcement indicating their imminent publication.

Best,

Jon Kelly - The 2CGaming Team

We're Late, But Here's The Plan...
about 6 years ago – Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 12:18:47 AM

Alright, folks - it's been a month of forward-moving progress here, but we're behind and need to push out our deliverable a bit here. This update will be taking the place of the early February update, though expect to hear from us during February with progress updates. Let's get into the details:

The Good

The only issue we're running into with Lion's Vault is writing delays. This means that everything else is progressing as expected - no additional delays on these fronts.

The Music: We've been in contact with the fantastic Pontus Rufelt and he is making some *bang-up* awesome soundtrack components for the combat and ambiance of Lion's Vault. Check out the sample below:

The Story. Oh man, it's awesome. One of the items we underestimated on our delivery of the writing component for this piece was the foundational work that needs to get done during Chapter 3 to foreshadow occurrences in modules 4, 5, and 6. Both of this module's predecessors  have hinted at the Nartheneen race and its impact on the modern races, but the civilization really starts to get fleshed out in Lion's Vault, which means we as the writing & development team need to have it *almost all* fleshed out to make sure we're hitting the right consistency and beats to keep it from feeling segmented.

There are some really brilliant combat encounters & monsters created by Chris Grey & Ryan Servis that are, thematically and mechanically, like nothing you've seen before.

The Bad

As you well know, everything's late. The short of it is that everything that depends on the writing being in a finalized form is late. This means maps, objects, and tokens haven't been able to start yet, though each of these runs 2 - 3 weeks and will be worked on simultaneously by different artists.

To go into a little more detail here, Ryan and Jon have been going over Chris' versioning of Lion's Vault and making fairly heavy revisions to ensure consistency with previous modules, future development, and both the themes and constraints of the module series.

The Ugly

The "Ugly" comes in the scheduling of the project to get us to a point of completion where we can finally get these off to you, our long-suffering backers! Here's the schedule we're working to hit:

• February 4: Revised Writing 100% Complete
• February 4: Artists start development of objects, tokens, maps, and remaining illustrations based on completed writing.
• February 11: Complete technical revisions to module writing are completed.
• February 18: Objects and Tokens are complete. Module is copy-edited for spelling, grammar, structure, word choice, clarity, etc.
• February 25: Maps are complete. Formatting pass 1 is complete.
• February 28: PDFs are delivered to backers. Print requests are sent to the printer.
• March 14: Print copies start arriving at your homes.

Thanks again for your continues patience here, and our sincere apologies for the delays on this project. We're going to be taking some time off between the completion of Module #3 and Module #4 to review the pitfalls we encountered during the process here and make sure that all the proverbial ducks are in a row before we start up Module #4.

As always, please reach out with questions, comments, or concerns. We're happy to hear from you.

Best,

Jon Kelly - The 2CGaming Team