200K: More Pilgrim Tiers Available!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 02:35:29 AM

Hi everyone, Jay here! This is a pretty quick update, I'm just giving you all a heads up that we've hit $200,000 and have unlocked the wall scrolls! We've added the scrolls to the Pilgrim III Tier and they'll also be available on Backerkit once the campaign concludes. 

Check out the previous update for more information on the wall scrolls depicting the great arc of the year, manufactured by Heart of the Deernicorn (the folks who made Fall of Magic and BFF, among others) and with art by the amazing Conner Fawcett. 

If you already have a Pilgrim Tier, please do not upgrade to a higher Pilgrim tier. That's confusing for new backers and you'll be getting the same upgrades regardless. 

Halfway There! Stretch Goals, News, Other Kickstarters, and Art
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 11:16:29 PM

Hi all, Jay here!

Thank you all so much for getting us this far. The Kickstarter is only half over and we're on track to be one of the largest indie RPG Kickstarters ever produced by such a small team. This could've only ever been possible with all of your help, and what you're creating is more than a game, but a movement within games. To that end, multiple new stretch goals are dedicated to uplifting other creators, and ensuring Wanderhome is not an aberration among the indie RPG world. 

Stretch Goals

We hit 175K, which means we get to bring Núria Tamarit on board, and we can pay all of our artists way more! Getting to empower our team of marginalized artists and creators has always been the goal of this project, and getting to implement it is incredibly cool.

$200,000 - Wall Scrolls

At $200,000, we'll be adding a new bit of merch, something I'd been dreaming of getting to include since this project started: A wall scroll! This will feature a depiction of the great arc of the year by the incredibly talented Conner Fawcett, and we'll also be using this art in the book (hopefully as a gatefold, but we'll see!). These will be available for all Pilgrim tiers (past and future, so you don't need to upgrade!) and will also be available in limited numbers on Backerkit once the campaign concludes. These will be useful both for keeping track of the unique season system in the game and for visual reference while playing!

The wall scroll will be produced by Heart of the Deernicorn, and will be handmade and screenprinted on actual canvas, with a wooden dowel and serged edges. I still can't fully process how beautiful they're going to be.  

 
Heart of the Deernicorn is an award winning game publisher (Fall of Magic, Life on Mars, BFF!) and manufacturer of custom maps, garments, and other game-related textiles. They just announced a really gorgeous print tied to Avery Alder's The Quiet Year, with art by Jabari Weathers.

$225,000 - Increased Pay For Stretch Goal Writers

At $225,000, we'll be paying our stretch goal writers even more. From the beginning, our goal has been to pay all the writers involved what they're worth, but with this stretch goal we'll be able to set aside even more money for each of them. We'll be paying them each 50 cents a word, 5 times the recommended minimum rate for writers in RPG design. Every writer on board Wanderhome is a skilled professional in this field, and we're proud to pay them what they're worth.

$250,000 - Wanderhome Community Fund

From the beginning, Wanderhome has been intended to reflect the vast diversity of experiences possible. While it is autobiographical (as all games are) it is also vast and sprawling, and we knew we wanted to create a space that plenty of people could play in. For weeks, people have been requesting information on writing for Wanderhome, for creating custom content and taking part in the world of Hæth. The Wanderhome Community Fund is the start of this, as the start of a way for us to invest back into our community that we owe so much to.

With the Community Fund, we plan to bankroll and support creators who want to develop content for Wanderhome. This will empower creators to commission art, hire consultants, and set aside valuable time to work on the projects they need. We'll also provide templates and assets for creators to make their work truly shine.

This is something very big and something pretty new. While we're building off of the work of Sandy Pug Games from Monster Care Squad, we're still entering uncharted waters. I'll have more information over the next few months after consulting with copyright and tax law, and other creators, to make sure that this project is as fulfilling as possible. Our goal is to build a community that everyone can be a part of, that isn't bound up in oppressive dividends and draconian legalese. 

We hope that the Wanderhome Community Fund can be the start of something special. It's not easy getting a project off of the ground, and we know that there's an incredible and enormous world of marginalized geniuses creating beautiful work who just need a little help getting eyes on it. We have intentions to expand this Community Fund to cover more than just Wanderhome, but for now, I hope that we can all bring the Hæth to life together.

(Note: The Wanderhome Community Fund is not a charity, and isn't classified as such under Kickstarter rules.)

$300,000 - Merchandise

At $300,000 we'll be adding a lot of merchandise! We'll be working with Heart of the Deernicorn for manufacturing, and our goal is to provide you all with some incredible Wanderhome-themed goodies without suffering from Kickstarter product bloat. This will all be screen-printed by Heart of the Deernicorn, and might include posters, hoodies, shirts, or anything else that seems good to screenprint. If there's any merchandise you want, please let us know and we'll look into it. These will probably be available on Backerkit instead of through tiers, but we'll keep you posted!

Other Kickstarters

Mnemonic: A Weaver's Almanac is a fascinating game set in the queer utopian world of Mnemonic. Dee and their team of talented and diverse creators have built something truly special here, integrating mechanics around memory, identity, and reflection. It disrupts and disputes fundamental assumptions about how games are and can be, has wonderful art by the talented Sin Posadas, and has an all star team of creatives behind it, including (but by no means limited to) Pam Punzalan, Nicholas Masyk, Guanzon, and Synxiec. At $50,000 they will make sets of custom dice by Natural 20 Gaming Dice, which I'm confident will be incredibly beautiful.

Preparing For Paris is a really cool RPG about playing as the manifestations of various sports attending a school to prepare for the Olympics. Logan is a wonderful creator, and this seems like an absolute delight. It's also in its last 48 hours, so grab it now while you can!

Skirmish: Wallet Friendly Wargaming is a really uniquely designed game based on the design philosophy of wargames (like Warhammer 40K) but with a priority for accessibility and price. In it, you'll use your dice to represent your soldiers, and can play it anywhere you want. Even though it's probably the furthest you can get from Wanderhome, I'm still so hyped for it! 

Some Art

As always, we love to get to close off our updates with some art. I have three pieces for you - one by Danny Kyobe, one by Lauren Henderson, and one by Nadhir Nor, all in various stages of completion. I especially love looking at Danny's gay lizards, and the frog in Nadhir's piece with a caterpillar on their head.

That's all for now everyone, catch you soon!

Jay

HARDCOVER
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 09:33:59 PM

no introduction we hit $115k yesterday which means we can now produce a hardcover edition of the book!!! as the layout designer this is one of the most exciting stretch goals for me. we just got printing quotes back and still aren't 100% on the specifics (still choosing between really nice paper and ridiculously nice paper) but I can announce that both the softcover and hardcover editions will now feature:

• french flaps (for holding your place when you close the book)
• gold foil embossing on the cover (!!!!)
• eco-friendly FSC paper and soy-based inks 

and the hardcover itself will also include a dust jacket by our talented cover artist, sylvia bi! we should have a final version of the illustration in the next week or so but in the meantime here's a mockup with one of her sketches:

we are adding five new backer tiers featuring the hardcover option. each has a corresponding softcover tier: dancer is now shepherd, poet is now teacher, and caretaker is now guardian. if you already backed at a softcover tier, just change your pledge to the corresponding one to receive a hardcover instead.  

we also added 2 new tiers for our storefront partners (merchant 2) and for people who were looking for the pilgrim tier but it sold out! pilgrim 2 adds a hardcover and enamel pins (more on that in a moment). if you already have the pilgrim tier, you'll automatically get everything that comes with this or any future pilgrim tiers - so don't worry about missing out.

pins

not even a stretch goal, but we are now producing soft enamel pins based off of jennie lindberg's adorable small and forgotten gods sketches! they come included with the new teacher, guardian, and second pilgrim tiers, and will also be available as an add-on through backerkit once we wrap.

one shot network

this saturday at 8pm central time james d'amato will be playing wanderhome with our dear stretch goal writer adira slattery and some other folks on twitch! please check it out, this is very exciting for us, we'll definitely be watching.  

as always, more updates soon,

yours,

ruby

new stretch goals
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 09:33:53 PM

hey gang,

we're probably going to breeze through 150k today..... y'all are obliterating stretch goals almost faster than we can come up with (and pitch, source, budget, sign contracts for, meet about) them. almost.

i'm personally VERY excited to announce one we've been waiting to implement. meet: 175k

$175,000

at $175k, i'm beyond delighted to introduce our stretch goal-only artist, núria tamarit. while i love all my children (out-of-my-league-talented professional freelance illustrators) equally, i've been following núria on social media for years and years and her work is amazing, so evocative and colorful and stylish.

with the addiiton of núria to the team, at 175k we are also bumping up all of our artists to a flat rate of $700 per piece. this more than doubles some rates but from the start one of the driving goals of this project is to pay people first fairly, and then well. thank you to everyone who said "pay raises" when we asked what goodies you might want as rewards--it means a lot that you understand why this is so important, especially for this project at this moment.

however, don't worry, there will be many many more rewards for all you backers too. we've planned stretch goals to 200k and beyond, and will be releasing them just as soon as we get the logistics together. also, if there's anything you do have a great idea for, let us know in the comments. we hear you on more pins and more immersive elements.

oneshotrpg streams wanderhome tonight!

mentioned it in my last update but oneshotprg is streaming wanderhome tonight!! at 8pm central time. twitch.tv/oneshotrpg it's gonna be great! also lots of you have been asking for streams, playtests, how the game actually works in play etc., and this is a great opportunity to get an idea from people who really know what they're doing. see you there

more soon

yours,

ruby

100k!! and other updates
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 11:13:07 AM

thank you

hi everyone, ruby here, as you can tell by the lowercase. two days ago we hit one hundred thousand dollars pledged and today we hit 600% funded and there will never be enough to say to express our gratitude and shock and joy, thank you thank you all so much. not only does this mean we can put more exciting projects in the works, pay our team even better, etc., but it's a really big step for rpgs in general, towards a world where small indie presses run by two broke 20-somethings can make big, legitimate games and everyone can maybe sustainably do what they love. xoxo

printing + partner update

as you may have noticed we've had to kind of scramble to switch printers--our beloved small-press mixam just isn't build to handle the kind of reception we've received in the past 8 days. so we're excited to announce that we're printing with printninja! take a look at their website to see what some of your other favorite projects they've definitely produced. i worked with printninja back in 2017 on the strong female protagonist vol. 2 print edition layout and am very excited to again get personal guidance from their very experienced technicians. printninja also offers more elaborate finishes for the book than we were expecting--look for news on that just as soon as we get quotes! the books are going to be so, so beautiful.

we've also gotten in touch with backerkit! backerkit will be coordinating shipping and basically the entire backend for all of your orders, including the add-ons everyone's been requesting. rest assured everyone will get everything they've ever desired. if you're here from the backerkit games newsletter, hi, welcome, thanks for coming!

+1 forward

jay was just on plus one forward, an rpg/pbta podcast, where she talked about wanderhome and, of course, moomins, as part of their belonging outside belonging summer series. check out the episode here!

always more art

look at this new sketch we got today from the extremly talented conner fawcett! oh, to be a frog absolutely chilling in a river under a bridge.

we've also starting seeing some fanart which is blowing our minds!!! see some below and click through to personally thank the talented artists :)

ok that's all i have for now! much more soon. 

yours,

ruby