Live Stream Link
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 10:38:50 AM

Hey guys! I just wanted to drop the live stream video link here for you. It'll be on both YouTube and Facebook at 2 pm PDT (9 pm UTC), so I've provided the links for both below. Come say hi!

I don't have any real agenda or anything, apart from spending some time with you. As such, I figure we'll just go for an hour or two, or however long people want to hang out.

I hope to see you soon!

Okay, that's it for this update! Have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you later!

Videos of Miniatures and Upcoming Live Stream
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 09:43:09 PM

Hey guys! Today we have some cool videos to show you many of the core game miniatures. The tooling process is complete, so, by and large, these are the final production minis. We went with a dark gray color for the wanderers and malformations, while the terrors, abominations, and bosses are a dark red. We chose these colors to showcase the minis' details better. 

The wanderers each have their own video, so now I'll get out of the way and let Roger show off the minis!

Catherine's Miniatures

Claude's Miniatures

Emily's Miniatures

Lynas's Miniatures

We'll have videos of the minis that we missed this time in our next update, such as the Abominations. 

There's also been a slight change of plans regarding the minis. The factory is currently working on the plastic trays for the miniature box. (The box is three levels tall, so there are several trays to design.) When they've completed those, they'll put together the miniatures box and then produce the miniatures, rather than waiting until the paper products have finished printing. This way, the miniatures will already be done and waiting when the printed components catch up,  hopefully cutting off a little extra time there.

Let's Do a Live Stream!

It's been WAY too long since we all got together to hang out, so let's fix that. As of right now, I'm planning on doing a live stream next Saturday, the 23rd, at 2 pm PST (9 pm UTC.) We can talk about anything you guys would like, from Dawn of Madness to Deep Madness to Twisted Fables to Celestial. (Or something completely random. I'm sure there will be some of that as well.) I will have some new miniatures to show off, including the king and his stage that we showed off a couple of updates ago. If you guys are interested, maybe we'll do a reading of a story or two from DoM, as well. I'll post the link in a mini-update for you, but it should also be available on both Youtube and Facebook.

Okay, I think that's it for this update. I'll talk to you guys again in a week!

A Wanderer's Growing Existence, More Art, and a Timeline Update
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 07:03:30 PM

Hey everyone! Sorry that it's been so long since the last time I updated you. I have no very good reason for it other than to say that I got caught up writing the stories for this game and just didn't force myself to stop. My sincere apologies for making you wait. 

Today, we will delve into existence cards, update you on the timeline for the game, get a quick look at the tweaked domain cards, and show you some more art. Let's get going!

The Current Timeline

In the comments, I noticed a few people asking about the current timeline. Of course, that is a perfectly reasonable question to ask (and one we're overdue on answering), so let's cover it. 

If I'm just being real with you, the number one thing that is holding this game back is me, and that is the area where there are the most chances for further delay. These stories are long and involved and, while I'm trying to work faster (and am undoubtedly succeeding), there's a lot of ground to cover with them. My current goal is to have the wave-one stories done by the end of the year. Is that an achievable goal? Honestly, it's a tall order and is at the very least highly ambitious. However, even if the end of the year passes, they should be done by March at the latest. 

As I'm working on the stories, the team is fine-tuning gameplay, creating cards, playtesting, and making sure the systems all work. In addition, they're commissioning hundreds of pieces of additional art (largely for the coda and domain cards) and working on creating the best game board we can muster. (For any wondering about the game board, we have gone through several iterations and still don't have one we're 100% satisfied with. The team is working hard to make sure we get this right, particularly since some boards for complex games with similar bents have gotten some pushback from the community over the past year or so, and we want to make sure we don't fall into that pit. We are getting closer with each iteration, though. We're aiming for "iconic," which hopefully means we'll at least hit "really good." Actually, I suppose that could be said for a lot of the game.) The team is also working on the endings, making sure each offers a unique, memorable challenge. 

Once I'm done with the stories, we will need approximately three months to fine-tune everything, tighten up the endings, finish up/proofread the cards, and make sure everything works great. After that, we will move into production. 

Speaking of production, the wave-one miniatures are currently almost completely tooled, barring a few small tweaks to a couple of the miniatures. However, once tooling is 100% completed, we will need to wait to make the actual miniatures until the printed components begin manufacturing. The reason for this is that the miniatures could run the risk of warping or breaking if they're left in big mini bins for too long, and they won't move into their cozy plastic homes until the assembly process. As such, they will be manufactured concurrently with the printed components; then, both should be ready for assembly at roughly the same time. Following that, we will move into the hated (by me, at least) shipping process. 

All of this means we are probably looking at Summer/Fall 2022. However, we have to throw in the massive caveat of world conditions. Things seem just to be growing more chaotic rather than evening out as I think most of us had hoped. With that in mind, we want to allow for whatever horrors we find ourselves confronting along the way (such as the currently truly monstrous international shipping situation - a situation that some seasoned board game veterans like Steve Jackson are currently projecting will cripple the industry. Here's hoping it evens out and proves him wrong.) So, we are currently projecting that we will deliver your games in October 2022.

We are truly sorry for this extended delay. Thank you for bearing with us as we continue to finalize this game and make it the absolute best product that we can. We will keep you updated as we move forward and will continue revealing more as we get closer to delivery. 

One thing that is weighing on me is getting a new demo of the game out there so that you can see what all the changes have wrought and how the game plays. That's very important to Roger and the team, too. It'll be a bit tough until we get the finalized game board, but please know it's something we're actively working to do for you so you can better visualize how the game works without having to parse the gameplay together based on my updates. 

Until we're able to do that, though, I'll keep feeding you gameplay details in these updates and hope you can at least get a rough idea until you see it for yourselves. 

Some New Art

As mentioned above, we continue to get new art, specifically for the coda cards. Here are a few of the new ones since our last update:

I'll have a couple more at the end of the update, too, just to keep you scrolling. =)

Existence Cards

We might have mentioned existence cards briefly in a previous update, but, regardless, this will be a deeper look at these important components. (Even if we did, it was a while ago.)

Existence cards are one of the main ways to upgrade your wanderer in Dawn of Madness, adding new abilities to your wanderers, buffing your powers, and offering you insights into how the story is affecting you. While you don't carry over your existence cards from one game to the next, you will unlock new cards as you progress through each wanderer's story. Once a card is unlocked, you will be able to play it in all future games after paying the necessary existence for it. It will never be locked again.

There are two varieties of existence cards: your regular pool and cards unlocked through gameplay. (These cards might not be unlocked through the places you might expect, either. Sometimes, the only way to find them is to fail spectacularly.) Here's a look at both backs and fronts:

You'll notice that both types share a basic layout, though. Let's break it down:

At the top, you can find the title and the wanderer to whom it belongs. Below that, you can see the game effect text, and at the bottom, you can see how many existence tokens you will need to purchase the card. They're pretty basic and easy to understand cards, but what they do is quite expansive.

The existence cards form much of what makes wanderers truly unique - particularly as you unlock more of them the further you progress in the game. This system also ensures that you aren't overwhelmed by too much information at the start of the game, allowing you to get used to how the game plays before adding more complexity (and cool new abilities) to the experience. (This also gives you much greater flexibility in customizing your wanderer each game, adapting him or her to the situations you find yourself in.)

Speaking of unique abilities, some of you may recall long, long ago during the initial campaign when we talked about the inner offerings, which were unique special abilities each wanderer possessed. Well, now the inner offerings have been wrapped into the existence cards. This helps to streamline the special abilities for the wanderers and ensure that those abilities are upgradable the more you play the game. 

For instance, Emily's two types of treatments (psychiatric and physical treatments) are now managed largely through existence cards. (Here's a look at the current versions of these types of cards, too:)

Well, I think that will do it for this look at existence cards. We'll have more game breakdowns in the future. Now, let's take a quick look at a couple of updated domain cards.

Domain Card Update

While I wasn't as sure if we had covered existence cards, I know we've covered domain cards in the past. Even still, there has been some more progress on these, and the team wanted to show them off. Plus, they fit in nicely with the existence cards since both are ways you can strengthen your wanderer in the game, and both kinds allow you to unlock new cards during encounters.

These two are normal Otherworld domain cards. That means these are objects you can always find regardless of what wanderer's story you're playing and can always be found inside the domain deck. (Which, once again, is essentially like the search deck in Deep Madness.) The middle effect text is how the card is used when played normally in-game as a refresher. It also tells you what the thing is (a unique item on the left and a ranged weapon on the right.) So, in the left-hand case, this passive effect is always in effect until the card is discarded. The right one, though, requires an action to snipe at those monsters. It's also only usable once per round. Then, along the bottom, you'll see domain icons listed. Most domain cards only have three icons along the bottom. This means you can discard this card at any time to spend these domain icons as a part of a test, thus buffing your die roll results. 

These two are wanderer-specific domain cards. The left one is Catherine's (which is why there's a branch under the title), while the right is Emily's (with the syringe.) Both of these are items, though you'll notice the one on the right is unique. You'll also notice the one on the right has five domain icons that you can gain from discarding the card. A word of warning, though: if you get a unique domain card that belongs to the wanderer whose story you're currently playing through, you might not want to discard that card unless you really need those domains. It's entirely possible something could come up which would require that card, and if you've discarded it, then you'll be out of luck. 

Once a wanderer-specific domain card has been revealed, it will be added to the domain deck and can be drawn in any forthcoming game, regardless of which wanderer you're playing. Could this lead to some domain card combos surfacing across wanderers' stories? I guess you'll have to wait to find out.

More Art

Okay, that's it for this update! Thanks again for being here with us, guys. We very much appreciate you sticking with us and being a part of this game. Now, to show our appreciation, here are a few more pieces of art!

Talk to you again next time! I hope you have a great week!

The King, an Art Eruption, and a Surprise!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 05:25:06 AM

Hey there! I hope you've been doing well since last we talked. 

We don't have a really "deep" update for you today gameplay-wise, but every once and a while, you just need a good dose of popcorn, candy, and nightmares, don't you? I think so, at any rate. As such, we have some fresh art to show off for you, a surprise, and something that many have asked for but none have seen yet. Prepare for the visual overload!

The King in Yellow

Some of you may remember that there was one miniature that we never got around to showing you guys during the campaign: Cary the actor's final boss! 

The King is actually a combination of miniatures, and it's one that has been a bit of a difficult one to finish. Part of the reason for this is that this is actually two miniatures: the King himself and his stage - and the stage needed to be multi-purpose. There has also been some back-and-forth as to what the final miniature would look like, with different team members rallying for different versions.  Some thought a particular version was too normal, while others thought another version was too extreme. In the end, though, we decided on the version shown below.

Now, these turntable gifs are not the same hyper-glossy pictures that we did during the campaign. And, actually, there might still be a few tweaks to these miniatures before we send them off to get tooled. But, regardless, we wanted to finally give you a taste of what to expect from the King and the stage. 

Let's start off with the King himself!

But what's the King without his grand stage?

Here's the King on the Stage:

The Stage is not just for the King, though. Every actor deserves to get center-stage, and so, throughout Cary's various finales, each of his troupe will get their chance! First, here's Camilla on the stage, followed by her standalone art (which you may have seen before, but which is also still super cool.)

Next, we have Cassilda:

Finally, we have The Stranger:

Now, that might have been the end of the show if not for a moment of extremely happy happenstance. One day, I decided to search through the team Dropbox folder for the King, and I came across an image that I thought was really cool. I messaged it to Roger (our fearless leader), and said: "I love what we did with the King!" To which he replied, "That's cool! Whose image is this?" I responded, "Why, ours. I found it in our Dropbox."

Remember I said that one version of the King was labeled as maybe too weird or extreme? Well, that wasn't the one who eventually ended up being the King. The weird one was the one I found. I made it pretty clear that this was the version I preferred and kept prodding. Roger really liked it, too, but some of the other team members weren't sure about it. So, we decided on a compromise: we would keep the current King, but we would also add another miniature that was never intended to be in the expansion into the box. 

You heard that right: if you ordered the "Of Art and Oblivion" expansion, then you are going to get a brand new miniature that was never mentioned or a part of the original plan! That miniature is The Drama, and I would like to present him to you now.

How about that, huh? I hope it was worth the wait for you! (I know I'm certainly happy about the end result.)

Some New Art

So, as I said, this wasn't going to be a really deep update today. But we did have a few new pieces of art we wanted to show you, so let's finish off with those! Let's start with some of Claude's World Shards:

Now, here are some more pieces of Emily's coda card art!

LOL! And with that, I bid you goodnight and sweet dreams! =D

In future updates, we'll dive into more gameplay stuff, including finales and final bosses. We'll also have a bunch more miniature samples to show you and other fun stuff coming up. But I hope you had as much fun going through this update as I did. Have a great day, and I'll talk to you again soon!

Fighting the Terrors
over 3 years ago – Sun, May 16, 2021 at 12:35:54 AM

Hey guys! I hope you've had a great few weeks. I'm sorry this update's a little behind. I've been laser-focused to hit a milestone for the game - something that we did hit recently. (Yay!) I'm not going to go into it much here today, but hopefully, it'll lead to more tasty tidbits for you in the future. Today I want to talk to you about two pretty important aspects of the game: the Terrors and how to fight them.

First, though, there is a question I know some of you have been eager to get an answer on regarding VAT in the EU. For those who don't know (and as best as I understand it - sorry, this isn't my area of expertise,) the EU is implementing a change to VAT on imports starting in June, which will base the fee on an item's suggested retail price rather than the manufacturing price (which could potentially be an enormous difference in some cases.) For anyone involved with this, it pretty well seems to outright suck. We are still gathering information on this and won't know anything completely concrete until the law passes, which is when our EU shipping partner will be able to offer some more educated insights. However, I can say this: we are looking at every possible way to mitigate this that we can. 

Our goal is for our EU backers not to pay anything additional. There is a vanishingly small outlying possibility (the absolute worst-case scenario) where we could potentially have to ask for a little additional help with this. Still, even that would be significantly less than the full amount and would be only if many other things we're working on completely fell apart. I say this only because we like to make sure we are completely up-front with you guys. Essentially, if it reached the point where we wouldn't be able to deliver your games because the burden was simply too great, then we would have a further conversation with you. I will say, though, that, in the past, we have never charged any more for shipping post-pledge manager, including when we've been hit with cool new tariffs (Deep Madness) or when the longboat shipping price suddenly tripled from the expected rate (Twisted Fables.)

I hope that helped those of you who have been worrying about this. I know this is a major new unforeseen wrinkle, but it's one we're working to iron out for you. 

Okay, enough with that unpleasant stuff. Onto the Terrors!

The Terrors

As you may recall, the Terrors are the basic enemies in Dawn of Madness. Some of them are tied to specific wanderers (such as the Patients for Emily, the Symptoms for Catherine, and the Penitents for Lynas), while others are free to roam between the wanderers, eating whom they will (such as the Watchers.) Each Terror is unique, with its own special abilities and weaknesses. However, one thing they all have in common is that they want to eat your mind (or face - they're not picky) for lunch.

Here's a look at the Terror's card:

Okay, let's break the card down. At the top, you have the Terror's name, family, and the wanderer it's tied to (if it is tied to one.) Moving down the card, you have the three domain rift slots (we'll discuss them below) followed by its stats and passive effect. Then, along the right, is the Terror's action sequence, which is essentially its AI. (We'll have more about this below, too.) 

The stat line is really the only thing we won't go into deeper later on, so let's go over it again quickly. First, you have its maximum health on the left, its mental capacity in the middle, and the reward you'll receive for defeating it. In this case, it has eight health and four mental capacity. As a reminder, mental capacity shows two things: where it will initially be placed on the mental capacity track (and thus activating after everything higher than it on the track) and how much mental energy it can expend to perform actions in a round. The crystal reveals that you will receive two existence for defeating this monster.

Now that we have a basic grasp of the card let's move onto the domain rifts and combat!

Domain Rifts

The domain rifts were slightly controversial during the campaign, with some people thinking monsters might be more unique if they had specific domain rifts baked onto their cards that never changed. However, this idea is based on a misunderstanding of what the domain rifts are. So, let's clear that up. 

The monsters in Dawn of Madness are, essentially, invulnerable. Under normal circumstances, they would not be hurt by anything you threw at them. But, as they pass through the Otherworld, they meld with it, changing with it, taking some things, and losing others. After all, it is the Otherworld that has given them life. They are fragments of nightmares, consciousnesses, and fears given form by this place and the wanderers trapped inside it. In a sense, you're not even actually fighting against real beings in many cases: you're fighting against the Otherworld itself (or at least its manifestations.)

Thus, we come to the domain rifts. The domain rifts are simultaneously a Terror's greatest strength (if a domain rift lines up with a special ability) and its only weakness. They are the only available chinks in its armor. When a Terror is spawned (or during the refresh phase of every round,) its substance will intermingle with the world shard it starts in. To do this, it will discard its remaining domain rifts from the previous round (if there were any left) and then roll three dice of the colors matching the sentience icons on that world shard. The results from this roll will determine the domain rift tokens that will be placed on its card for the round. Here's a picture to help illustrate this:

In this example, Patient Hysteria just spawned on the Asylum Hallway. In the upper-left corner of the world shard are three sentience icons, corresponding to green, purple, and yellow. Hysteria will thus roll one green, one purple, and one yellow die to determine her domain rifts. After rolling, she has gotten a purple sphere, green eye, and yellow brain. Matching tokens now go into the three circles on her card. 

Once the domain rifts are placed on the Terror's card, you'll notice something unfortunate: The domain rifts contain an eye (which activates Hysteria's top special ability) and a sphere (which activates her lower one.) These abilities are only ever active when matching domain rifts are present on the card and are often cumulative. (So, if you rolled three eyes, Hysteria would see incredibly well and would move three additional spaces.) Conversely, if she didn't have any spheres, then her lower special ability wouldn't activate at all.

Combat

Now, how do you attack this nasty little beastie? You target one of the Terror's domain rifts and roll every available matching-colored die you have against it, hoping to roll the rift's symbol as many times as possible. For this example, we'll say that Catherine has reached Hysteria's space and wants to attack her. Looking at her domain rifts, she sees that she has three opportunities to hit Hysteria, though Catherine can only choose one for every attack. Catherine chooses the green eye since that will hinder Hysteria's movement, and Catherine has four available dice to use (as shown by the green "4" on her dashboard.) 

Catherine rolls her green dice and gets two eyes. However, she also has one green eye domain on her dashboard, which she spends to deal one additional wound. Thus, all told, Catherine inflicts three wounds against Hysteria. (Only five health left to go.) 

Additionally, once this attack is completed, the hit domain rift is discarded from Hysteria's card. This has two consequences: first, as mentioned previously, it can no longer use its eye-triggered special ability. But secondly, it now only has two domain rifts available with which wanderers can attack it. If wanderers' attacks remove all of those domain rifts, Hysteria will be invulnerable for the rest of the round.

If all of Hysteria's health is whittled away, it dies and is removed from the game. But nothing in the Otherworld ever stays dead for long...

There are other things that can impact combat as well, such as domain and coda cards which you will collect throughout the game, the wanderers' own abilities that can be unlocked as they progress, or condition cards that can beset you. But this should give you a basic understanding of the system.

Now that we know how combat works against Terrors let's see two of them activate in-depth!

Deeper into Terrors

We'll start with a continued look at our previous example Terror, Patient Hysteria.

Passive Ability

First, let's take a look at Hysteria's passive ability.  Every terror has a passive effect. In fact, each Terror, Malformation, and Abomination has one, so it's something you'll see a lot to add spice to every horror you face. For Hysteria, while she's on the game board, the eye domain's basic domain effect is banned. Normally, wanderers use eye domains to prevent wounds by spending them from their wanderer dashboard as well as rolling them in a defense test. But with Hysteria, that is no longer an option. This is an incredibly dangerous effect because wanderers can essentially no longer defend themselves while Hysteria lives.

Another thing you may have noticed about Hysteria is that she has a thing for eyes. (All of her abilities rely on them in one way or another.) This is because Hysteria's eyes were stolen from her during her time as a patient at the asylum, resulting in her having to rely on the Otherworld for her sight. Furthermore, after her suffering drove her to hysterics, she wanted to make sure everyone had an opportunity to share her pain (and her blindness.) Who knows, maybe she'll even find some new eyes from some unfortunate victim on her travels.

Activation

Each time a Terror activates, it will perform only one of the actions from its action sequence (unless otherwise stated.) It will always perform the top action that it can currently legally take - assuming it has the mental capacity to complete it. 

Looking again at Hysteria, we see her first action has a cost of 2 mental capacity. If she doesn't still have that available, she won't be able to do anything. At the top of the ability is the action's requirement, which is that no wanderer can be in her space. If that requirement is fulfilled, she will move toward the nearest wanderer with the most eye domains. (Should she have eye domains in her domain rifts, she will also move one additional space for each eye domain rift she has.) 

If there is a wanderer in her space, though, then she will skip her first action and move onto her second. This one also costs 2 mental capacity and requires that a wanderer is in Hysteria's space. If that requirement is met, then she will deal two green damage to a wanderer in that space. If there is a sphere in her domain rifts, she will also deal additional purple damage based on how many eye domains the targeted wanderer has. (And that damage is nothing to sneeze at since the wanderer won't be able to use eye domains to defend against it!) The one saving grace here is that the Terror's action doesn't specifically mention what wanderer to attack, as long as the wanderer is in the same space. So, if there are two wanderers and one has no eye domains while the other has four, you will want to choose the one with none. (Furthermore, if you see that your friend is about to take a ton of damage due to how many eye domains he has, then you could always jump into his and Hysteria's space to take the blow for him before Hysteria can activate again.) 

Of course, none of this matters if the Terror doesn't have at least two mental capacity. If that happens, the Terror must negate its remaining mental capacity and move directly into the "zero" section of the mental capacity track. When that happens, her activation ends immediately. She won't activate again until the next round. 

Symptom Bile

Now let's move away from our friend Hysteria and turn to another Terror: Symptom Bile. Now that we have most of the basics down, I'll move through this one a bit quicker.

Bile's passive effect is that while it is on the game board, each wanderer's maximum health is reduced by one. How positively vile of Bile! What's even worse, though, is that this effect is cumulative with similar effects - and all Symptoms share this passive effect. Its maximum health is only five, but its mental capacity is six, giving it plenty of opportunities to do nasty things. Lastly, if a wanderer kills it, she will receive two existence as her reward.

For its first action, it will see if there is a wanderer in its space. If there isn't, it will spend two mental capacity to move toward the nearest one. If there is, though, then it will move onto its second ability.

If one or more wanderers with the Weakened condition occupy its space, then Bile will spend three mental capacity to deal two purple damage to one of them. If it has a sphere domain rift, then it will also deal 1 additional purple damage.

And lastly, if both of the other actions are unavailable, then Symptom will perform its third action, spending two mental capacity to Weaken a wanderer. (And if there's a brain domain rift on its card, then it can perform this action again for free!)

That ends our look at Terrors. Many of the things we've covered here (such as domain rifts and action sequences) apply to a number of the horrors in the Otherworld, though, including the Malformations. So hopefully, this will give you a good overall idea of how many of the Otherworld's denizens will interact with the wanderers (and vice-versa.) 

Well, that will do it for this update! We'll talk with you all again soon, but in the meantime, I hope you have a great few weeks! Bye for now.