Production Update
about 10 years ago
– Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 04:24:33 PM
Hey folks!
We’ve been hard at work at Magpie HQ on Urban Shadows stuff. It’s well past time for an update!
Draft to Rules Editing
At this point, we've handed off the new draft of the full text to Mark, incorporating all the feedback from the playtests. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the amount of feedback we received was well beyond anything we've ever seen before. It’s been an incredible experience to hear from all of you about what’s working and what needs to be changed and all of that is going to show up in the final text.
The rigor and intensity of that playtesting means great things for the game and gameplay in general, but it has meant that we’ve been a lot slower to get it all processed than we initially hoped. Huge chunks of the game have had to be rewritten to address the new mechanics, and we’ve had to write new sections to assist players in dealing with situations that our playtesters brought to our attention. It’s good work, but it’s slow...
New Production Schedule
… which means we’re going to have to revisit the production schedule!
Right now, the text will go to developmental edits with Mark. We expect to have those done in a few weeks, followed by copy editing and layout. Our hope is that we get all the editing done this month, in time to send the book to layout in early November. From there, we should be able to send it to the printer fairly quickly, perhaps even in time to ship books before the end of the month. We’re going to say early December to be sure, but we’ll see how things go.
October - Rules Editing / Copy Editing
November - Layout / Printing
December - Shipping
Our apologies for the delays! All Kickstarter estimates are always guesses, and these particular guesses got blown out of the water by the intense playtesting feedback. We’ve got the dice in early from Chessex (woo!), so we’ll be able to ship our core books as soon as they get back from the printer. Thank you for your patience!
New Urban Shadows Contributors
Now that we’re moving to final text production, we’re happy to announce two new Urban Shadows contributors: Amanda Valentine (Editing) and Thomas Deeny (Layout):
Amanda Valentine is a freelance RPG editor and developer. Her work includes the Dresden Files RPG, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Fate Accelerated Edition, Little Wizards, and many others. She also edits fiction, including several of the Spirit of the Century novels. She blogs sporadically at ayvalentine.com about editing, parenting, and gaming. At reads4tweens.com she writes spoilerific book reviews for adults who care about what the kids in their lives are reading. You can find her on Twitter as @ayvalentine and @reads4tweens.
Thomas Deeny is a graphic designer who specializes in book layout and game design. His layout and design work can be found in a number of roleplaying games, such as Growling Door Games' Chill, Dead Gentlemen's Demon Hunters, Margaret Weis Productions’ Firefly line, Magpie Games' The Fate Codex, Crafty Games’ Mistborn, to name a few. His work in board and card games can be found in AEG’s Nightfall and Tempest game lines. Thomas is an evangelist for hobby gaming, and helped to organize the gaming community in southern Arizona, working with manufacturers, retailers, and gamers to develop community awareness of the hobby. You can review his published works at denaghdesign.com and follow him on Twitter at @denaghdesign.
Please join us in welcoming them to the team. We’ll be hearing and seeing more from them this coming month!
Again, thank you for your contributions and patience. This is a big project, and we’re thrilled that you all have joined us on the journey to a finished version of the game. We only get to send the book to print once, and we want to make sure it’s the best possible game it can be. Thank you!
