48 HRS to go: How we made Dwarf coins
almost 10 years ago – Fri, May 27, 2016 at 07:50:28 AM

Hi everyone -

Gosh, time flies when you're making pretend money. Less then two days left? Wow.

Thanks for getting us this far, and we hope we can make you all a Shining Gold 20mm Dwarven Soldier coin if we hit Escalation +3. We'll be sending Backerkit invites out very soon after the campaign ends, and Backerkit funds will count towards stretch goals.  

So, today I thought I'd show you how our friend Drew Morrow went about designing the Dwarven Tower coins. Drew and I used to work together at BlueTongue THQ, and he is now 33.3% of Three Phase Interactive - check out their nifty spaceship builder game Defect on Steam, which was made possible on Kickstarter. Yay for crowdfunding!

Inspiration and first sketches

Full text from the 13th Age rulebook: "Dwarven gold pieces are square with grooved edges. They get their name from the fact that they stack perfectly, though obviously not with anyone else’s gold coins. To start a fight with a dwarf in a tavern, knock over the tower one of them has stacked beside their ale. Sometimes that takes some doing; dwarven coins seem to want to stay stacked instead of falling over. It’s not unheard of to find ancient dwarven treasure troves where the coins are still stacked into perfect towers. Elves joke that it’s not the fact that dragons steal dwarven gold that bothers the dwarves so much, but the fact that the dwarves’ towers get knocked down and scattered throughout the hoard."

I knew Drew would be perfect for this project, as he has a 3D art brain, and this was going to be more involved than anything we've done before. Here are his first pencil sketches:

Those are awesome, but they are too complex for the way we make the coins, and also too high. Our standard coin thickness is 2mm, and that has to account for all the layers on both sides. We sat down over a Kaiju beer, and I gave Drew a much better briefing on what I was thinking, and he finalised the design.

You can see how the 3D has levelled off. Drew had the ingenious idea to add the Dwarf faces, and to make them escalate in importance: he named them Soldier, Captain and General. Such a great idea! I miss our game studio days, so it's been great to make things together again.

We had decided not to denominate the coins, but I suggested we could add an I, V and X as a subliminal form of numerals. (Not that 13th Age Dwarves are Romans, of course)

We sent this off for approval to Rob and Jay at Fire Opal, and they sent it on to art director Lee Moyer. They all loved it (it's always great when your licensors are happy), and Lee had the great suggestion to make the lines on the I, V and X join with the lines leading in and out of them.

Vectored graphics

We make all of our coins from vectored line art; we hand them to our 3D sculptors in digital form, and they create the heights and layers. Now that the concepts were approved, Drew was able to create the final art in Adobe Illustrator.

Looking at them again today, I still can't believe how clever my friend is.

He also mocked-up a 3D render with Zbrush, which shows the depths of each element.

And finally, he produced this handy side view showing how the coins should stack.

Sculpting the 3D

Our 3D sculptor took over, and produced this candy-coloured piece of pre-production artwork, showing that the final coin required 12 separate layers of 3D. It is without doubt the most complex set of coins we have ever made.

Then, we waited nervously. We planned it carefully, but would all of the surfaces fit together in all combinations? The only way to find out was to make it in metal and stack 'em up.

It was a great day when we got this photo:

Sometimes we need to make a second mold, but these coins were perfect, first time. There was just one change: one of the dwarf faces is recessed rather than embossed, but this was necessary to make them fit together nicely.

Now, thanks to you, we're finally making them! I think the Dwarf King would approve.

Cheers,

Mark, Andre & Penny

Escalation +1 reached: Free PDF
almost 10 years ago – Tue, May 24, 2016 at 10:51:14 AM

Hi everyone,

Just five days to go, let's come home strong! This happened over the weekend:

We have passed AUD $25,000 together so we are now at Escalation +1. Huzzah!

Our first Stretch Goal has been unlocked: All backers who qualify for Stretch Goals will get a free PDF of Children of the Icons, an issue of 13th Age Monthly, with big thanks to Pelgrane Press. (13th Age Monthly is definitely worth subscribing to, and this issue will give you a taste.)

If you already have this issue, Simon has confirmed that you can gift it to a friend; we'll ask for the email address in the Backerkit survey. Thanks for suggesting this, Melody.

Our next Stretch Goal at AUD $30,000 will be our our elegant 13th Age velvet bags, so let's hope we can smash that this week!

Shining Gold is shiny

We got our samples of the Dwarven Tower coins in shining gold - check out this bullion:

The photo shows all three coins. We will make a Soldier coin for everyone who qualifies for Stretch Goals if we can reach Escalation +3 at AUD $33,333. (You read that right, we reduced the target. Escalation is supposed to escalate, right?)

The Captain and General coins will follow at Escalation +4 and +5. Keep going, everyone!

Coin review from the Heavy Metal GM

Sean Clark is the Heavy Metal GM, and he writes a lively RPG blog with a focus on 13th Age.

We enjoy his writing, so we sent him some samples of the Dwarven coins and a couple of the icon tokens. He really liked them. We hoped he would. After all, they're metal!

Thanks, Sean (he backed us, too!). Be sure to bookmark his blog, and follow @HeavyMetalGM on Twitter.

13th Age spotlight: Aaron Roudabush

Another of our backers is Aaron Roudabush, aka @WolfSamurai on Twitter. Aaron runs a Patreon where he dishes up brand new Archmage Engine content every month, perfect for your 13th Age campaigns, and you can get in on that for just a dollar a month (more is appreciated, and gives you a say in what he creates).

Recent articles include a Prehistoric Age bestiary (perfect for the Serpent King in my campaign), a three-part pirate adventure called Scourge of the Waves, and Codex of the Devil's Light, new monsters inspired by Diablo.

Supporting Aaron helps a fellow gamer keep writing, and gives you some good stuff in your mailbox. You're rolling 20s every way you look at it!

New limited pledge incoming

As it's our last week, we'll be updating more frequently. Tomorrow we'll have all the details of our new limited pledge: what's in it, how many we'll have, and when we'll open it.

Until then, we'll just leave this here...

Cheers,

Mark, Andre & Penny

13 days to go: Shiny!
almost 10 years ago – Mon, May 16, 2016 at 08:39:50 PM

Hi all -

The campaign has 13 days to go!

That seemed to be worth an update in itself, but several exciting things happened today that we couldn't wait to share:

The coins are on the production line

We've added up how many coin sets and token sets are in your pledges so far, doubled it, added some more, and got those started.

We're serious, we want to get these to you in July. Thanks so much for funding the campaign and making it happen!

What happens if our guess is short? We've gone extra hard on the icon tokens so that we should have plenty. If we need more, we'll get started on those as soon as we know. A second smaller run run will take around 20 days, so we should still be in time for delivery. We'll keep you all updated if that happens.

Shiny

We've just received photos of the Shining Gold samples.

Adjust your sunglasses and don't stare too long:

We were hoping these would be a bit Fort Knox, and there they are!

So, you ask, with a mad gleam of gold fever worthy of Fred C. Dobbs:

How do I get one of those?

Glad you asked:

• Our GenCon Adventure backers and One Unique Icon backer will each get a 75-coin set in Shining Gold. Those five heroes backed large and backed early, thanks to you all.
   
• We will shortly open up a new limited tier offering another four 75-coin sets, plus some other exclusive 13th Age swag. There's been a bit of interest in this, so we've decided to do it in the fairest way possible: in a future update we'll detail the contents of these pledges and let you know the time and date that we unlock it in advance, and let you all have at it. We'll try to choose a time that is okay for Melbourne, London, New York and Los Angeles.
   
• If we go beyond Escalation +2 at $30,000, then the campaign has been a success, and we can start giving back. The Escalation +3 stretch goal will be a 20mm Shining Gold coin for everyone who earns stretch goals, and if we get up to Escalation +5 you'll collect a complete ziggurat of one Soldier, one Captain & one General coin.
   
• Our promise: We'll only ever make these during this campaign.

That's not fair I want more sell them to me now!

Sometimes life is not fair. Sometimes you face the arch nemesis who burnt your family home and you unleash out your most badass Daily Power and roll a 1. Sorry.

We intend these coins to be limited. It would harm our campaign if we offered multiple versions of the coin set. In truth, the Shining Gold is some mad bling, but the reflective surface takes away from the beautiful detail in these coins. The regular coins will look better.

But, they sure will be shiny, and it's a way for us to add a very cool limited edition item and stretch goal for you all at zero risk to the campaign. That's a win for us. We hope you understand.

One step forwards, two steps sensibly back

Over the weekend we hit that mid-campaign doldrum where some days we go backwards, as folks who peaked early readjust their pledges in line with their budget. We are all in favour of that! Gold fever is one thing, but we want you to pay rent and eat and other important stuff.

But, we also want to make cool coins. So, if you can spread the word, please do so. Let's see if we can hit Escalation +3 together and bring on the bling!

Best,

Mark, Andre & Penny

The escalation escalates: New stretch goal
almost 10 years ago – Mon, May 16, 2016 at 03:27:39 AM

Hi everyone -

It's Saturday afternoon in Australia, but as I type this it's still #FridayThe13thAge in some parts of the world, so I hope you're all carving up pumpkins in honour of the Diabolist!

The campaign is in that nice cruising altitude, and we're just about to hit 250 backers, wow! Today's news is, we've got a new stretch goal to unlock at $25,000. Read on...

New stretch goal: 13th Age Monthly PDF

Thanks to Pelgrane Press, we have a new PDF stretch goal to offer you (cheers, Simon & Cat!).

If the campaign hits AUD $25,000, then all backers who qualify for stretch goals will receive a free PDF of Children of the Icons by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, the 13th Age Monthly issue that has ideas for that strangely common occurrence, the player character whose One Unique Thing is an icon for a parent. Plus, because Gareth is cunning, there are also a couple of NPCs who have the same lineage, and they are badass.

This PDF is the new Escalation +1, at $25,000. The velvet bags are at the same $30,000 milestone for Escalation +2. We're making new samples to show you for Escalation +3 ...

Friday the 13th Age

Right now Pelgrane Press are doing a huge special to mark this year's one and only Friday the 13th Age. The Diabolist has run amok, and you can get 13% off 13th Age orders from Pelgrane, plus plenty of free downloads of Diabolist-related game material.

The doomsday clock is ticking, so get on this right now before the hellhole closes over again!

(An imp also told me of a Drivethru RPG sale of 13% off all 13th Age PDFs all weekend...)

Thanks for your ongoing support, everyone. Next week we'll take a look at how one of the icon tokens was designed, and start our 13-days countdown. Get ready to escalate!

Best,

Mark, Andre & Penny

Project funded: Icon d12 unlocked!
almost 10 years ago – Tue, May 10, 2016 at 07:56:53 AM

Hi everyone - 

Great news, we just passed AUD $20,000 in pledges, so the project is definitely happening!

Thanks to each and every one of you, and a special hello to the 13th Age Organised Play GMs who have just joined us. You folks are out there spreading the word in stores and clubs, so we're super happy that you'll have some shiny tokens to attract new players with.

Icon d12 is now unlocked

As promised, we have asked our friends at Q-Workshop to start production on the Icon d12. Thanks again to Fire Opal for giving us the license for this print run.

The Icon d12 is now available as an Add On for AUD $6. It can be added on to any pledge level from the 10 COINS pledge level and up. If you would like this Add On, please manually add AUD $6 to your pledge (that's about USD $4.50).

You can confirm your selection in Backerkit when the campaign ends, but adding the amount now increases our total and gets us towards the first stretch goal.

We'd like to thank everyone who asked for this, including commenters Tim and Daniel and others. We thought that dice would be too hard, but you made us look into it, and now it's happening. It's all thanks to you. Look at this beauty!

The coins in detail

Ace backer DZero recently asked what is on the back of the coins, so we have added a photo to the front page. In case you missed it, here are both sides below.

Some production trivia: you'll notice that all of the Dwarf faces are embossed, except the face on the front side of the Captain coin, which is recessed. Our 3D team had to make this change from Drew's design, otherwise the coin would not nestle and stack neatly with every possible combo (under Soldier, under Captain). There are so many layers in these coins, and the 3D is so complex, we were happy to go with the team's suggestion.

New pledge levels for multiple coin sets with tokens

We had a request from Mark in the comments to add a Four Coin Sets + Four Token Sets pledge. A lot of you are seem to be increasing your pledges for Add Ons later, so we thought we'd create some new pledge settings for Coin Set + Token Set combos. We can't include every possible configuration, but here are some mirrored pledges: 2+2, 3+3 and 4+4.

If these match your intent with your Add Ons, then please jump in! You'll save a couple of dollars, the shipping is pre-configured, and it helps us get a more accurate snapshot of our production requirements. You can see them on the sidebar, but here they are for you:

• DOUBLE COINS & DOUBLE TOKENS - AUD $172
  [~USD $129 / EUR €117 / GBP £91]
  You will receive two sets of Icon Tokens (26 total) and two sets of Dwarven Tower coins (100 total: 50 x small, 30 x medium and 20 x large), plus any stretch goals unlocked.
   
• TRIPLE COINS & TRIPLE TOKENS - AUD $239
  [~USD $179 / EUR €163 / GBP £127]
  You will receive 3 sets of Icon Tokens (39 total) plus 3 sets of Dwarven Tower Coins (150 coins: 75 x small, 45 x medium and 30 x large), plus any stretch goals unlocked.
   
• QUADRUPLE COINS & QUAD TOKENS - AUD $300
  [~USD $225 / EUR €204 / GBP £159]
  You will receive 4 sets of Icon Tokens (52 total) and 4 sets of Dwarven Tower coins (200 Coins: 100 x small, 60 x medium and 40 x large) plus one Icon d12 die, plus any stretch goals unlocked.

Onwards to Escalation +1

Thanks for funding us, it's a great feeling to know that you folks like what you see!

In truth, this is just the start. The base level of funding helps us recoup costs for the 16 molds and artwork, but we need to get to AUD $30,000 before we have the budget to start expanding the project and getting you some free stretch goals (and we really want to, we have some cool things planned, and we're making samples now).

Our first stretch goal is the 13th Age velvet bags, which will be fantastic for coins, tokens or dice. See below for a photo of a bag loaded up with a 50-coin set with room for more!

So, please continue to share the word with fellow RPG players and board gamers, and let's see if we can drive this thing all the way to Escalation +6 !

Best,

Mark, Andre & Penny