A dark urban fantasy tabletop RPG Powered by the Apocalypse. Fight the darkness or let it swallow you whole!
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hello fantastic backers!
February is upon us, and it’s time for us to show off a bit of what we’ve been working on this past month. It’s a been a busy and productive 2015 already, and we’re excited about the progress we’re making. Let’s get to it!
I’ve been working through the Urban Shadows text now for a few months, and it’s getting close to completion. In early February, we sent the first fourth of the book (the playbooks) to editing with Amanda and then on to layout with Thomas. We’ve already approved the new playbook format—a cleaner, meaner version of the mockups that you’re already familiar with—and we’re excited to see the new versions from Thomas soon. Unfortunately, he’ll be on vacation abroad for another week or so, but we expect to get final core playbooks released soon (roughly March 5th).
The rest of the book should be headed to editing at the end of the month. It’s a little later than we hoped, but we still plan to go to print in March. We hope domestic backers will get their copies of the book by the end of the month, but it may be April for our international folks. If we hit delays in the printing process, we’ll have to update this schedule again, but we’ll keep everyone posted as we learn more. Hardback books, for example, may take an additional 2 weeks, but we won’t know for certain until we actually send the files to the printer.
We’ll distribute the PDF before we go to print. We’re hoping you all can read it carefully to catch any typos or inconsistencies. We’ll set up a timeline for that process when we release the electronic copies.
One of the big developments this month was that we moved to a new artist: Juan Ochoa. Mike Mumah did some great work for us leading up to the Kickstarter, but he turned out not to be a good fit for the final project. Luckily, we’ve worked with Juan extensively over the last year and he was able to move some things around to fit us in on a short schedule.
And we’re pumped to show you what he’s been drawing:
One of Juan’s major challenges is to step away from the traditional Apocalypse World art (silhouettes) to make room for images that better showcase complex urban environments and different ethnicities. Urban Shadows is a diverse game, but we’re excited about his ability to navigate that diversity and retain some consistency across the images.
Nowhere is that more true than the playbooks! We’ll have the new playbooks (with art) out soon, but here’s a sneak peak of a few images:
At this point, City Guides for Dark Streets are rolling in for the different cities. We’ve got some work to do once the main text is complete, but we’ve managed to push a few of them along in parallel. The first one that’s completely finished is Strix Beltran’s Los Angeles City Guide. It’s a great example of how to make a city real for your players, and we’re excited to share a sneak peek with all:
As you might have heard, we’ve been nominated for a Golden Geek Award! Woot!
We were mighty surprised to be nominate, considering that we haven’t published a finished version of the game, but we’re excited to see more people giving Urban Shadows a serious look. If you’re an RPGGeek member, you can vote for us, but we’re honestly crazy flattered just to be nominated. We can’t wait to show them (and you!) the final product, but we’re honored that they think so highly of the project so far.
We’ve been fairly quiet for these first two months of 2015, but expect to hear from us more in March. We’ve got playbooks to release, a final PDF that’s not too far off, and more City Guides to share. We greatly appreciate your patience, and we’re excited to get these books into your hands/claws/demonic tentacles soon!
Once again, thanks for your patience. We’re still plugging away here on the text, the playbooks, the art, and the layout, and we appreciate you all being patient while we get it right. We only get to publish this thing once, and we really want to make sure to knock it out of the park. Here’s a quick update on a few things we've gotten in, the production schedule, and next steps.
Thanks to some of our backers, we realized the the original Chicago map cut off a number of communities that should have been included on the south side of Chicago. We’ve gotten Mark Richardson to update the map, and we’re proud to present version 2 of the Chicago map:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/00avr8tea7tub3h/URBAN_SHADOWS_CHICAGO_v2.pdf
Mark’s done a great job with all the maps, and we really appreciate him taking the time to make changes. We think these are going to look great in the Dark Streets book!
As we mentioned in our last update, we have decided to break up the New York City Guide into five separate boroughs. We’re proud to announce that Tim Rodriguez (Brooklyn Indie Games) and James Mendez Hodes have already submitted the first two NYC Guides for Brooklyn and Manhattan respectively. We’ll share those with you so that you can get a sneak peak as soon as they are through the editing process.
Speaking of editing, we’re still knee-deep in rewrites for the main Urban Shadows book. Andrew has done a marvelous job putting together the rules and structuring the book, but we want to dig deeper into the text to make sure it’s a useful tool for folks new and old to the Powered by the Apocalypse system. We also want to make sure that the tone and feel of the text draws players into the dark and tangled web of urban politics!
Given that we’re still updating the text, here’s our new production schedule:
January - Rewriting/Editing
February - Copy Editing/Layout
March - Printing/Shipping!
Thank you all again for your patience. We’re excited to get these books into your hands; we just want to make sure that everything has been worth the support you've given us.
Thank you!
Hello folks!
Lots of stuff has been happening behind the scenes with us and Magpie games over the past several weeks. The custom dice have arrived, the main text is still in editing with Mark, we’ve been working on art direction and layout with Thomas, and collecting text from our Dark Streets authors. It’s great work, but it’s also slow work and it’s taking a bit more time than we had originally anticipated. We’ll keep plugging away and let you know as soon as we have news to announce.
We do have some other news for you though! We have decided to turn our New York City Guide into FIVE separate guides, one for each burrough, all to be included in our Dark Streets City Supplement. We’ve hired on some amazing talent to help us with these and we will announce them shortly.
Exciting times for Urban Shadows backers!
Andrew & Mark