Pre-Release 3 and the Path Forward
over 7 years ago – Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 08:44:19 PM

Hey everyone!

Where We Are At & The Path Forward

First off we have one final pre-release for you guys before Shattered gets sent off to print (ideally). Our intent is to give this release about four weeks (until the end of February) for final editing passes. In this time we will be focusing less on systems and story, and more on grammar and styling.  

Next, when this process is complete the book will be sent to our printer in China. At this point, we will also make the Official Digital Copy available to those of you that ordered it. Once our printer gets the files from us we expect roughly 3-4 weeks to print, then ship the books back to us here in the US.  

Finally, from there the books will go to Amazon for fulfillment. This final step will vary depending on where you are in the world, but we will update you as each of these steps takes place. 

So without further ado, here are the goods. :)

Pre-release #3

We also have updated sheets for you guys. Now available as writable PDF's!

Character Sheet: Printable | Fillable

Monster Sheet: Printable | Fillable

Airship Sheet: Printable | Fillable

As with all our previous releases, please let us know if you find any mistakes, no matter how big or small. You can let us know via our Forums or this handy Google Form. You can track our progress HERE.

 Important: Backer NPCs

We sent out an Email about a week ago asking those who pledged the Neuromancer tier if any changes were to be made to Backer NPCs. You do not have to change your NPC if you do not want to, but the offer is still open to update your NPC now that there is more lore and world information available. Please contact us here on Kickstarter or at [email protected] if you wish to update your NPC!

What Can You Do?

As before, enjoy the game and help us find mistakes! We thank you for your help with the project thus far and your patience for the INDE team overshooting the original deadline.

Thanks,
The INDE Team

Happy New Year!
over 7 years ago – Sat, Dec 31, 2016 at 10:05:21 PM

Happy New Year everyone!

It's been a great year and we'd like to thank everyone for your support thus far! We're still hard at work on the book despite it being the holidays and each week we get closer to completion. We have a much more granular progression tracker available on our google spreadsheet. As always, you can give us a shout here, our forums, or on Discord!

Enjoy your new year, everyone!

The INDE Team

Happy Holidays!
over 7 years ago – Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 12:19:17 PM

Hey everyone!

First off, we at INDE would like to wish yall a happy, and safe holiday season!

But you didn't come here for that, we're sure. You want to know what we've been doing over the past month. Well, we've been pretty busy! The team has finished all of the backer proposed suggestions, and system tweaks. We're down to the final stretch, the world story and editing.

The team wants to deliver a truly high quality product, from gameplay to grammar, and we want to once again thank each and every one of you for your support and patience as we work to accomplish that goal.

We would also like to share with you a portion our new vision for Neroth.

     In 2571AR, an indentured workforce was struggling on the Alecian Plains. While the conditions for the laborers were rarely lavish, many were worked to the bone for starvation wages. Among them was Alesia Rydrict, and she was fed up with clawing her way through an agonizing life toward a miserable death. She sold her family’s ancestral land to free her from their ancestral debts, and departed with two notes to her name. In hopes of a fresh start, she trekked north. The journey was somehow more exhausting than her previous life, but freedom had become a wellspring of energy for her. With it she was able to surmount every obstacle in her path.

     There she lingered for several months, building an outpost high in the treetops to escape the various creatures and undead that roamed the forest. In this time, she ventured in every direction for a daytrip, mapping out each major feature: the forest, the lakes, and the ravines. Then she returned south.

     With that, she turned her ambition towards Lanis. Among the many potential partnerships to be had, Rydrict found two families, the first of which, Norvet, was a moderately successful forgehouse while the second, Advaeja, was a warrior family of similar reputation. While each house had garnered modest reputations, they were interested in opportunities, and glory outside of Lanis. Together with Rydrict, they planned an expedition to survey and settle this forest to the north. Should the venture be successful, each party would own a full and proportional third of the venture’s profits.

     Nearly four years after her initial discovery, Rydrict and the two Lanitian families were in business. The first few felled trees were carved up and used to build a formidable palisade around the new settlement. The axe responsible for the work was called Neroth, and it was decided that the new settlement would share in its legend.

     With the promise of work and security, people from all corners of the world flocked to Neroth. In that fashion, business went well for nearly four decades, until Alesia Rydrict, who was the last of the remaining founders, passed away. In the wake of her death, the children of each of the three founding parties, which had been called lodges, began to squabble for ownership. This infighting came to a head following a string of assassinations, which effectively dissolving the old pact held by their parents.

From there, civil war and rioting engulfed the city, putting the three families at odds with the general population. Once the Vampires and Florvana enter the picture, the situation becomes far more interesting.

We believe this new vision gives a clearer picture and a much richer story for the city. As such, we've moved its founding on the timeline to much later.

Sincerely,
The INDE Team

Post-Halloween Update
over 7 years ago – Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 12:44:29 PM

Hey folks!

We wanted to give you a real update for the work we’ve done on Shattered over the last month.

Editing

We’re chugging along right here with our current fixes. As a team, we’ve polished off all but one of the backer suggestions and two edits of our own making (~99%) and are getting down into the nitty gritty of sentence structure and our overzealous comma use. As always, you can submit us your suggested edits via a form or our forums and track our progress here.

Book Assembly

On this front, so far so good. The assembly of the book is the driving force for everything we’re doing right now that isn’t associated with editing. There will be another update in the coming few days with a new version of the PDF for everyone to peruse. However, book assembly has been a challenge of its own. For those that don’t know, we use Google Docs as our collaboration tool to write Shattered. Things that look perfect in Google Docs such as length, appear exceedingly different once placed into the InDesign template and formed into a PDF. So documents that we originally thought were 100% complete, have now become too long, too short, or no longer start or stop on the correct page causing layout issues further into the book. Which brings us to our next topic.

World Story (“Fluff”)

While we’re doing pretty well here, we focused far more on system than fluff since our Kickstarter a year and a half ago. And again with our playtests, we focused on getting everyone the top of the line system to playtest and enjoy. As such, when the book is assembled, the addition of the fluff affects the book’s layout. We’re currently rehashing all of our fluff to ensure it fits in the InDesign template smoothly and fills up any unnecessary whitespace with the addition of information, converting smaller topics into sidebars, and rearranging how we wish for the information to be displayed.

Upcoming Pre-Release - What’s New?

Well, first and foremost are the updates supplied by you! Second would be the addition of our polished and hopefully finalized fluff sections that we feel confident in releasing. Again, we hope to release it to you in a few days once the last few things we have in green on our Core Book Edits sheet are implemented.

Surveys

Just a quick update to let everyone know there are still 26 of you who we do not have a response from the September Kickstarter Survey. We would like to know what name, if any, you want presented in the Thank You section of the book! Feel free to message us if you do not remember seeing a survey.

Sincerely,
The INDE Team

Mid-October Update
over 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 02:04:47 PM

Hello again!

We noticed it had been almost a month since our last tangible update, so here we go!

Overall Editing

With your help we believe we have gotten as many of the corrections made as possible! We're down to 7 out of 240 (~97% complete). So thank you all so much for your help. Don't forget, you can find our progress here.

In addition, we're doing our best to root out some of our passive voice for sentence variation.

World Story (aka Fluff)

With fluff we are just about polished up and finished. We've got two locations left to spit shine, both of which are sitting around 50%. As for the NPCs, we only need to place a few more of the backer NPCs and a select few of our NPCs into their correct locations in the book and we'll be good to go!

What's Next?

After that, it's a final pass of editing and sending it off to the printer. Unfortunately, we still have no concrete date to send it to the printer as we want to ensure the highest quality product is shipped to you, the backers. As always, thank you for your patience and understanding as well as your support for our project over the last year and a half!

Thanks,
The INDE Team