May Update! Boring Manufacturing Stuff, Basically.
about 1 year ago
– Mon, May 12, 2025 at 12:30:34 PM
Honestly, this update is not going to be the most exciting - it's largely a "progress continues" update, to keep folks in the loop. TL;DR:
- We're in the manufacturing process (it takes longer than you'd think)
- Tentatively good news on the tariffs front.
- Starting work on our final add-ons.
- Mini press push is underway!
Manufacturing
I mentioned manufacturing in the April update; files go to the printer, they approve them, they make samples, I approve those, then we start the print run. We're still in the proofs-and-samples process, after a few weeks of back-and-forth about the proofs and working out some miscommunications on a couple product dimensions. Physical sample production should be starting now. No updates on our timelines yet - I continue to say that if everything goes perfectly, you might get books in August, but Fall 2025 is a more reasonable expectation.
Tariffs
Mini-TL;DR: I think we have a plan to blunt the tariff pain, and I think there's a good chance the situation resolves itself before we import; but it's honestly still pretty bad.
I posted on Patreon last month and referenced in the KS update, but the US's new tariffs against China are absolutely a big problem. A few pieces of good news, though. First, we're actually not handling all the logistics ourselves; our manufacturer is a combined manufacturer/importer, and already has great contracts with multiple freight forwarders and customs brokers, so I don't have to do any scrambling to find different partners who are comfortable with the tariff situation. The current plan is to spread out the tariff cost among all the parties involved in the project, which should help defray it. (It'll still be thousands of dollars extra, i.e. awful, but that's better than tens of thousands.) Worth reminding anyone who's forgotten: tariffs are a tax on importers, not on foreign manufacturers — which means a tax on me.
When I made that Patreon post, we were looking at a 54% tariff, which worked out to about $10k extra. For the last few weeks, it's been a completely-nuts 145% tariff, which works out to something like $44k. 145% is effectively the same thing as forbidding Chinese imports entirely; nobody can handle cost increases like that. So I've been generally pushing forward, on the assumption the 145% wouldn't hold. And as of last night, it hasn't. For at least the next 90 days, the rate will be somewhere between 30% and 54% (when the president changes his top-line number, it's not clear how that filters down into the actual regulations). This is good news insofar as the $44k tariff bill was absolutely wild; worth noting that 54% is still back to "awful", and even 30% hurts quite a bit.
The last wrinkle is whether our shipments will actually arrive at the port within the 90-day window; the deadline there is August 10. This is possible but not particularly likely; if we budget ~6 weeks for manufacturing and ~6 weeks for boats to travel across the Pacific, that leaves us about 6 days of extra time (and I still haven't approved our physical samples yet). So I'm operating less on the assumption that the 90-day window will apply to us, and more that it's a sign of a broader fizzle-out to the trade war. (Which is virtually inevitable; you don't come to me for economic analysis, but a US economy without cheap Chinese goods would be unrecognizable, mostly in bad ways.)
Add-Ons
We're in early stages of our last add-on, which is the digital art book; it'll get done this summer. (Not going to lie, we're getting to it kind of slowly — the designer and I are both enjoying a bit of a rest from sprinting the book to completion.) And the last .STL's are ready to go, I just need to upload and distribute them — on my list for this week. VTT modules are in the early stages, so no interesting updates there yet.
Press
I've been working to gin up a little press coverage (getting more orders in before the print run starts would be a way to defray some of the tariff cost!). I'll be appearing on an upcoming episode of Dungeons and Degrees (I'll let folks know when it goes live; we're taping tomorrow). There should be at least one review going up (probably this week), with a few more under consideration. If you know any writers/podcasters/youtubers who you think might want to cover Spellbound Sea, let me know! You can also ping creators directly (in a polite and non-irritating way, of course) to let them know they should check it out; I'm happy to make review copies available.
That's it for this month! As a reminder, joining my Discord is the quickest way to get updates; also a good place to follow along with free releases and upcoming projects. And joining my Patreon is the best way to offer ongoing support and help fund those upcoming projects.
April Update!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Apr 05, 2025 at 02:19:32 PM
The 1.0 PDF should be available to you through Backerkit! Woooo! I'm delighted by this milestone, and I hope you are too. (There will be a 1.01 at some point; a couple typos slipped through in one of the appendices. So definitely report any typos you find back to me!). Unlike the v0.99 from a couple weeks ago, this has the cover art attached and includes final illustrations throughout.
Now begins the long boring step of manufacturing. First, we send all the files to our manufacturer, who checks and approves them. Then they create samples and send them to me, where I check and approve them. (If there are issues, repeat that process.) Then they start the proper print run. Once the print run's done, they'll ship it to the fulfiller, who will ship it to your doorstep. I'm still hoping we'll make the "summer 2025" estimate at this point, at least for some people; if everything goes exactly right, it should be possible for books to hit doorsteps in August. But it's very rare that everything goes exactly right, so most people should expect delivery in Fall 2025. I'll keep you updated.
Aaaaaand speaking of "things not going right", I imagine people have seen the news about the United States declaring a completely insane tariff policy. I posted a writeup on my Patreon yesterday, which has more details, but I'll reproduce the important bits here.
Spellbound Sea is being printed in China, making it subject to a 54% tariff. (There is a possibility the book is in an exempt product category, but nobody's sure.) This means getting products to US backers (85% or so of you) will cost me an estimated $10,000 extra. That sucks, and will be coming out of my pocket, not out of the project budget. I will not be holding up your books for this. You don't deserve to be punished for terrible policy. But I would very much appreciate some help if you can spare it, because I don't love having to set an extra ten grand on fire. I've set up a ko-fi for this purpose (you can use Backerkit for it too, but it's a little more cumbersome). If I'm lucky, I'll either wind up exempt or the tariffs will get walked back before we arrive in customs, in which case the money will go towards my next project's budget.
And if you're in the US, especially if you're in a red state, contact your representatives and senators and tell them these tariffs are insane and illegal. (They are illegal, in fact — only Congress has the power to levy tariffs.) Congress could fix this in a heartbeat if they just had the spine to do it, and angry constituents are how they grow spines.
That's it for this month! Probably I'll be a little quiet until there's news to share on the manufacturing front, sometime in May.
March Update: The Pre-Final Draft!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 02:30:01 PM
v0.99!
Woooooo! I just turned on distribution for the v0.99 Draft. This is content-complete, fully-edited, and has gone through multiple proofread rounds. It is the real deal.
Let's talk about what's not in it, though, because it's not the 1.0.
- The cover art! We're done with it, but it's waiting for the v1.0 draft. Also gives you a quick visual shorthand for "not actually the final thing".
- One (and only one) illustration, the Way of Progress monk. We've included the WIP sketch so you can see how it's going to fit. It should be along in a few more days, but for Reasons, it was important to get this draft in circulation now rather than waiting for it.
That's it! Everything else is in there. Every subclass, every item, every monster, and all the mini-settings. 336 pages of delicious material to jazz up your games. I'm so proud of this, everybody, and so grateful to all the amazing collaborators who helped me deliver this. Particularly our layout designer Bora - she and I went back-and-forth with 11 drafts here, and her work has been stellar.
It should show up in your inboxes courtesy of Backerkit; if you don't want to wait, check for it here.
So what comes next? Well, I would be eternally grateful if you could comb through the draft and report any errors or mistakes you find - surely a few slipped through. You can note issues in this spreadsheet. After a few days of backer review, we'll make the updates, publish the 1.0, and send the files off to the printer to kick off manufacturing! Barring any disasters, we're going to aim for that this weekend (for admittedly kind of dumb reasons: Monday's the submission deadline for the 2025 Ennies).
So read the draft! Tell me if you see mistakes! Play some games!
Other Stuff
With the book actually-for-real getting finalized, our VTT developers are off to the races (they were last month, in fact, but they'll really appreciate getting the actual 1.0 in their hands). Ultra-premium dice are done and delivered. We're still working on the spell cards - 90% of them are easy and are already done, 10% present tricky graphic design problems that we're still solving (either tables, massive walls of text, or both). I haven't started work on the digital art book yet, but that's next on the docket.
Order Lock
I'll be locking orders relatively soon - you'll still have a little time to edit stuff (and a warning will go out for finalizing addresses), but I'll need to send item counts to the factory. As is true of most Kickstarters, you'll still be able to reach out to me to get help with changes up until it's literally impossible (and adding stuff after order lock will be a headache but not a disaster; there will be some extra stock for everything).
February Update: So Close!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Feb 28, 2025 at 08:57:24 PM
Happy February!
I promised you a month ago that the February update would have the pre-final draft attached; alas, it does not. There's no big reason here, it's just a case of "everything taking a little longer than planned". TL;DR Pre-final draft should be done soon, ultra-premium dice are done, VTT's off to the races, spell cards are in progress.
Pre-Final Draft
We are agonizingly close! I'd like to have a clear reason why the draft's not ready, but honestly, it's just a case of stuff taking slightly longer than planned. Writing finished on Feb 4; editing on Feb 8; artwork revisions are still ongoing but were mostly done by Feb 15 or so, when layout & visual design kicked off. That's still ongoing and should get across the finish line any day now. After that, there'll be another 1-2 weeks of back-and-forth as we proofread the PDF and the layout designer and I work out the remaining kinks.
Ultra-Premium Dice
Late in the campaign, I added a special limited reward: 5 sets of unique handmade dice by Matt Boyd - those are now done! As soon as I get a little info back from the folks who added those, they will be shipping out. All 5 sets are hand-poured resin with custom insets; for the Storm's Eye dice below, that's blue mica, streaks of silver, and copper foil.
Note that these are not the ordinary Spellbound Sea dice which most people are getting. We've designed those and I'll share photos once we get factory proofs back from them; it'll be a minute.
Other Stuff
Since this month's is a relatively short update, I thought it'd be nice to include a few smaller mentions on our other bits and bobs.
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VTT Modules! Production's kicked off here and is underway.
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Physical Add-ons! Art for the GM screen is done and beautiful. We've been cranking through the spell cards, getting our print files ready for that. There are 300 in total - we've done the first pass, maybe 20% need to be adjusted somehow or get additional graphic design (generally because they're too long).
Legal Stuff
A quick update on some fun laws. For "basically reasonable but a headache", there are new product safety regulations in the EU I need to comply with — I don't anticipate any issues here, aside from some extra paperwork for me and a small fee to an EU lawyer. In "absolutely unreasonable", I'm currently assessing the impact of new US tariffs on my manufacturing costs. Unless it's ruinous, I don't intend to pass the cost on to my US backers; I think it'll sting a little to cover it, but I don't think it'll be worse than that.
Next month should see some really exciting stuff - hold on just a bit longer!
January Update: Home Stretch!
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 02:08:02 PM
Happy New Year to everyone!
Apologies for missing a December update; I was sick most of the month, and between that and the holidays, I just dropped the ball. TL;DR working on the pre-final draft, progress on the add-ons, and the finished book is in sight!
Pre-Final Draft
The original goal was to get draft 3 done in the first week of December; once it was already delayed by a week, the layout designer and I made the decision to scrap that as a milestone. It was going to be an intermediate draft, not content-complete, and would have cost about a week of my time and a few days of the designer's time dedicated to it. So instead we're moving straight to the pre-final draft, which will be content-complete aside from any last error corrections. I should have that ready for you on next month's update!
In terms of writing progress: all the classes, subclasses, species, and items are done. Feats and backgrounds are done. Spells are done. Seafaring rules are done. I have a little more playtest feedback to pull in on some of those, but not much.
The last two major big sections are the mini-settings and the monsters. I'm about halfway through on the monsters, and have started on the mini-settings.
Collaborations
The final collaboration of the book is nearly done! This is KibblesTasty's crafting appendix for the 45(!) magic items appearing in the book.
Maps
One of the neater things I haven't mentioned to folks much is that all our mini-settings will come with maps! This will help DMs run adventures there right out of the box (though you can, of course, ignore the maps if you have your own ideas). The maps are by the very talented Matt Francella, and he finished those up in late December.
Other Stuff
Since this month's is a relatively short update, I thought it'd be nice to include a few smaller mentions on our other bits and bobs.
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Art! My goodness there's a lot of art in this book. We've illustrated all the section splash pages, a bunch of items, some backgrounds, and a lot of interstitials (little stuff that'll sit in empty corners).
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VTT Modules! The first-crack developer for the Foundry module has unfortunately dropped off the project (no hard feelings, just didn't work out). Not a big deal; I've always had two backup plans in place for the Foundry module.
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Physical Add-ons! Žana is wrapping up the art for the GM screen (it's amazing). Bora's finished the dice and is finishing up the spell cards; once she's done there, I've got a pipeline set up to get the text ready on them.
