February/March Update: New Art! Same Work, Same Continues
about 2 years ago – Tue, Mar 05, 2024 at 12:05:28 PM

Hello, Agents!

It's been a while since we shared new art, so here is an amazing spread of the Triangle Agency lobby in Ternion City. Ryan Kingdom did the initial sketches and design for this but has been recovering from a joint injury, so Kodasea painted the final piece. It's breathtaking.

The bulk of our work for the last month has been editing, layout, and accounting! Taxes are complicated, paying people in the right way is complicated. But the books are looking amazing. 

Not a lot to share, but I can show some sample pages that are near-final!

Since last time, Ben has completed a full layout pass through the Field Agent Manual, and begun work on the General Manager's Toolkit. The pages above are from my second pass on the layout, coming along behind Ben to make sure everything is supporting the story and the rules.

The book is big!!! And so is The Vault, which is coming out to be a whopping 60 pages bigger than we expected. Lots of mission in there. We wanted it to be easy to read and run, and after lots of discussion settled on letting the page count increase rather than cram the pages full to meet our original goal. They're a bit more expensive to produce, but we reserved money for stuff like this.

Speaking of . . .

The Vault

I want to share some cool teasers/information on this book, but everything past this point has the possibility of spoiling (or heavily hinting) what's going on in the included missions. So, if you're hoping to play them and don't want any clues to the mysteries when they arrive at your table, don't look.

If you are a player, stop reading here to avoid Vault spoilers!

Here is a screenshot I took the other day while I was doing simple text placement on The Vault:

These are nowhere near final layouts (with the exception of Nosedive, which we worked harder on to figure out the template) none of them have had their visuals worked on yet.

What you can see here is the first two spreads of each mission! Throughout the book, we're using the same design elements but different color schemes to differentiate each of the 12 missions. If you look closely, you can see a glimpse of the artwork titles for each author! I can't wait to share the full versions. These missions are each wildly different, and they easily have enough material to last more than one session of play. 

It was wild  and very hard to oversee the writing of an entire novel-length book of missions in six months, but we're finally at the end of it! We could not have done it without the help of our editor, Will Jobst, and Sean's assistance in the editing process and creation of bonus material (like unlockable Requisitions and Anomaly Abilities for each mission!)

Thank You!!!

Thank you so much to everyone who is supporting us by playtesting, sharing the game, and talking about it online. As always, come join us on the Discord if you want to talk about the game.

I'll have more soon, including hopefully more updates on shipping, locking orders, and finalizing preorders before too long. Our priority is finishing the project and getting the digital version to y'all for playing ASAP, and we're moving at a steady pace.

Have a great week, and let me know if you need any assistance!

Best,

Caleb

January Update: Layout Process, Triscendent Tier Details, and More!
about 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 03:39:06 PM

The Work Continues!

Hi, y'all! It's been about a month so I want to give you a quick update. Here's what we're working on:

Page Layout of the Core Rulebook and Vault

Ben Mansky is our layout artist, so most of this work is going to him. It is a HUGE amount of work. Combined, we're looking at 400+ pages. None of these pages are copy and paste, either; there's something unique on pretty much every inch of these books.

Our process goes something like this:

• Ben and I (Caleb) meet to talk about what section of the book is going to generally look like.
• Ben takes the text (basically what's in the Unstable Edition) and creates pages. He places art, creates or sources icons, arranges the page, and then passes it to me and Michael Shillingburg (who designed our campaign page, and is my brilliant husband) to give feedback.
• I focus on the information organization and styling (Does this flow make sense now that it's on the page? What text should be bolded, italicized, given an alternate color?) and drafting new text to fill spaces that appear during this process. 
• Michael focuses on providing a second eye for design elements, creating icons, or adding quick additional pieces of detailed page design (like below) to pages that feel like something's missing.
• Ben revisits the spread after receiving the notes, adds new elements, adjusts things, swaps pages where necessary, and duels with the font to make it all fit.
• Once all of this is done for a whole book, Sean and I will do a final pass on every page to clean up the text, make sure everything is internally consistent and reflecting the most recent development, lock in final text, and move on.

We want these books to be as close to perfect as they can reasonably be, and we want them to be played for years going forward. This means we're being very deliberate, and it's taking a while. It'll be worth it.

The Vault is very similar. We're developing a consistent style across all the missions so they're easy to read and reference on the fly! I would love to share screenshots from that, but there is literally no available page that doesn't contain spoilers for a mission. I'm sure I'll find some good ones to show off later, but I don't want to do that to y'all in a regular update!

All in all, I would place us around halfway on this process. Ben is beginning work on the General Manager's Toolkit now, which (if you've played the Delta or Unstable) you know is the most complicated part.

Vault Mission Editing

All of our Vault Missions are turned in, and 9/12 are fully complete and in the layout stage. Right now, editor Will Jobst and I are working on editing the text for those final 3 so we can move into layout with them, too! Each of these missions is going to be a blast to play at the table. I can't wait to share these (and the amazing accompanying art pieces) with everyone!! 

Art

We have, I believe, 5 pieces remaining: two large spreads and 3 smaller illustrations. All are in progress right now, and will be easy to slot into the book when they're done. 

Just for fun, here's one of my favorite pieces from the Playwalled Documents in the book. These little guys might be hard to identify at first, but they're something that's featured in the Unstable Edition!

Product Design, Manufacturing, Shipping

Both sets of dice are designed (I love them, I'm waiting on having a full set physically to share photos) and we are moving into production. This means all of the physical products' specifications are settled, with the possible exception of exact book page counts. Next we have to design their exteriors: finalize cover designs, make the box design, add barcodes, write cover text . . . a lot to do!

On the manufacturing end, we've paid the manufacturer and they are ready to go as soon as we're ready with the files. We're still a ways from being ready, but the logistics are mostly figured out.

For shipping, I've asked Logan Dean, one of our Vault writers and someone very experienced with campaign fulfillment, to take over coordinating freight and communications with our fulfillment partners. We're making some final decisions this month on partners in some international regions so we can lock in final shipping costs and charge Backerkit preorders. 

This kind of stuff feels like it's secondary to the creative work, but it takes hours and hours on its own.  I'm learning a lot, and I was prepared for it, but it feels like when you're packing up your house and, as you approach the end, new projects keep springing up. Fractal-like, at the fringes of every task are three more tasks. See: calculating royalties and doing taxes, my other current major non-creative challenge for this project.

If you are a game designer and you're ever planning a campaign or working on a project like this, reach out! Let me share what I've learned!! All of this new knowledge will only be truly useful when it is shared.

Triscendent Tier Games

If you backed at the Triscendent tier, you're probably thinking about the game we'll play this year! For everybody's sake, my priority continues to be finishing the game -- but I'll send out an email in late February or March to begin scheduling games in mid April.

Here are some details to help you start planning:

• You'll provide your own group - 3-5 players, not including me. If you don't have enough people, I'll combine you with another group to get to that number of players.
• I'll be doing 1-2 a week, and there are around 25 of these. Once the scheduling email is sent out it'll be first-come first served on available time slots. If scheduling proves particularly difficult (like you're in an extremely different time zone) I'll work with you on finding times, but folks who can match my normal schedule will get priority when reserving particular weeks.
• Ideally, everyone's game will be done by the end of the Summer, close to when the physical editions are sent out. 

Thank you!

Thank you for your excitement, patience, and curiosity. Please ask questions if you have them, here or on our Discord. I'm working on this project for hours every day since even before the campaign and it has been a long, challenging process. Hearing from y'all keeps me going. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has been playing the Unstable Edition and sharing their play reports with us. Your stories are the reason any of us are working on this game in the first place!

I look forward to getting this game in your hands and to continue building the Triangle Agency world for many missions to come. You've made this a really unforgettable year for me, and I'm sure for some other members of the team, too.

More soon,

Caleb

Normal Box Set Preview! Blank Dummy Video
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 28, 2023 at 10:45:11 AM

Hello, Agents! 

We received the full blank "dummy," or test print, of the entire Normal Box Set! (Which means everything.) The dice in here are just sample dice, unrelated to the final designs, but the rest is exactly what we plan on printing next year minus all the actual content.

Check it out below! It's an unlisted video, but you're welcome to share it with anyone curious.

Some highlights about our current place in the process:

• Unstable Edition feedback has been incorporated into the final book, and we're editing the rulebook as we continue to test and hear from you.
• Layout is finally in progress! It's a huge number of pages and we're pretty particular with the look, so this will be a while. We expect to be getting close to finished by the end of February, with the digital version releasing in March or April. This might change, though. Our highest priority is quality, so that might mean some small delays.
• Art is almost entirely complete! We're missing fewer than 10 pieces.
• The Vault is almost done! We're waiting on a few final drafts, but most are in layout as well. These missions are awesome.
• Everything is paid for! We've paid all collaborators their full rates, wired the money for our initial manufacturing order, and even sent out our first revenue-share payments to the team.
• Shipping charges are close! Confirming everything in this box set our dimensions & weights, which means we can reach out to our fulfillment partners and get numbers set and charged, hopefully by the end of January. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions!

More soon,

Caleb

Unstable Edition v0.3.3.3, Our First Adventure in Print & Triangle Agency's Birthday!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 09:08:54 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Triangle Agency - Unstable Edition Download Link
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 07:18:33 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.