Status Report #28 and Shipping Report #7
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 09:07:00 AM

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: Howard is back at the drawing table working his way slowly but  steadily through the remaining sketches. Sandra is beginning the process to find and hire an audiobook narrator.

If you missed getting a hardback book and  want one, or realized it  is a perfect gift and you know who to give it  to, the books are now  available in our online store:

https://shop.schlockmercenary.com/collections/x-treme-dungeon-mastery

Shipping Update

Summary: 1978/2162 orders shipped, 14 unanswered surveys, 170 orders left to ship

• Level 2 Physical Book: 834/842 shipped (5 unanswered surveys)
• Level 7 Book, Bookplate, Sketch: 110/223 shipped (2 unanswered surveys)
• Legendary XDM: 43/93 shipped (1 unanswered survey)
• Legendary Seat at the Table: 2/6 Shipped
• Pre-orders: 167/168 Shipped
• Level 5 Book + Bookplate: 260/260 shipped Complete!
• Tavern Keeper Retailer Package: 10/10 Shipped Complete!
• Level 1 XDM gets a PDF: 500/505 shipped (5 unanswered surveys) Complete!
• Level 1a XDM gets Audiobook: 5/6 shipped (1 unanswered survey)    NOTE: Audiobooks are still yet to be delivered! These orders are  marked   shipped because they don't have associated packages.
• Level 0 NPC: 28/28 Complete!
• No Reward: 3/3 Complete!

Full Status Report

Deliverables List

This is the comprehensive list of things we owe to you as part of this project.

• XDM2e Hardback book: Complete!
• XDM2e PDF: Complete!
• XDM2e audiobook: In process
• Signed Bookplates: Complete!
• Desktop Backgrounds:  Complete!
• Sketches in books (or on separate  papers): In process! 
• PDF of printable character stand ups:  Complete!
• Quest for the Tavern PDF: Complete!
• Attack on Santa's Workshop PDF: Complete!
• Game with Tracy for the 6 backers who picked that level: Complete!
• Streamed book Illustrations: Complete! And now you can watch bonus streams of Howard sketching in books.  Howard's Twitch

The Details

Audiobook:

Tracy has reluctantly acknowledged that his schedule is too packed for him to be able to record the audiobook in a reasonable time frame. Rather than letting this deliverable linger unfulfilled, we're going to hire a voice actor to record the audiobook for us. If at some point in the future Tracy's schedule miraculously clears, he may still do some recording. But that would be in addition to this recorded version. Hopefully by the next update I should have a schedule for when this will be complete.

Sketching

Howard is currently averaging about ten sketches per day. At this rate he should be done in 16 more work days. He would really like to have all the sketches done before the Kickstarter for A Little Immortality closes, so that is what we are aiming for. 

As we said in our last update, if you have a pressing need for me to  pull your sketch to the front of the pile, simply email  [email protected] and I'll do that for you.

A Little Immortality: Schlock Mercenary Book 17

This launched and has already earned far more than we expected, which is a huge relief.  If  you've never read the Schlock Mercenary comic, each book is a stand alone story, so you can just jump on with this one. We'll have the same level of updating and customer support as we've provided for this campaign. Become a backer here:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/a-little-immortality-schlock-mercenary-book-17

There will be separate announcement emails for this project going out  via the Backerkit Launch email system. If you don't want to receive  those emails, please feel free to click the unsubscribe button so that  they don't continue to annoy you.

That's it for our current news. I think it is wise to keep myself on a two week accountability schedule, particularly with the funding of our  next crowdfunding project. So your next update will be the week of November 7-11.

Thank you all again for your trust in us while we take care of the last few things that we owe to you.

Sandra Tayler and the XDM2e team

Status Report #27 and Shipping Report #6
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 12:28:22 AM

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: Howard is back at the drawing table working his way slowly but steadily through the remaining sketches. Sandra is working with Tracy to get the audiobook complete.

If you missed getting a hardback book and  want one, or realized it is a perfect gift and you know who to give it  to, the books are now available in our online store:

https://shop.schlockmercenary.com/collections/x-treme-dungeon-mastery

Shipping Update

Summary: 1950/2162 orders shipped, 14 unanswered surveys, 198 orders left to ship

• Level 2 Physical Book: 834/842 shipped (5 unanswered surveys)
• Level 7 Book, Bookplate, Sketch: 91/223 shipped (2 unanswered surveys)
• Legendary XDM: 36/93 shipped (1 unanswered survey)
• Legendary Seat at the Table: 2/6 Shipped
• Pre-orders: 157/159 Shipped
• Level 5 Book + Bookplate: 260/260 shipped Complete!
• Tavern Keeper Retailer Package: 10/10 Shipped Complete!
• Level 1 XDM gets a PDF: 500/505 shipped (5 unanswered surveys) Complete!
• Level 1a XDM gets Audiobook: 5/6 shipped (1 unanswered survey)   NOTE: Audiobooks are still yet to be delivered! These orders are marked   shipped because they don't have associated packages.
• Level 0 NPC: 28/28 Complete!
• No Reward: 3/3 Complete!

Full Status Report

Deliverables List

This is the comprehensive list of things we owe to you as part of this project.

• XDM2e Hardback book: Complete!
• XDM2e PDF: Complete!
• XDM2e audiobook: In process
• Signed Bookplates: Complete!
• Desktop Backgrounds:  Complete!
• Sketches in books (or on separate  papers): In process! Details below.
• PDF of printable character stand ups:  Complete!
• Quest for the Tavern PDF: Complete!
• Attack on Santa's Workshop PDF: Complete!
• Game with Tracy for the 6 backers who picked that level: Complete!
• Streamed book Illustrations: Complete! And now you can watch bonus streams of Howard sketching in books.  Howard's Twitch

The Details

Audiobook:

When I spoke with Tracy two weeks ago, he said he planned to get the recording done in October. I haven't heard anything in the interim. I am reaching out to Tracy again this week to find out the status on the audiobook recording. If he is still struggling to make progress, I will ask again if, given his schedule, it would  be better to hire out the audiobook recording. I know that Tracy wants to be  the one to read to you, but it may be that in the interests of getting the work done we'll need to hire it out. I hope to have more clarity on this the next time I post an update.

Sketching

As mentioned in our last update, Howard was out of commission for nearly two months between hand injury, illness, and then the chronic fatigue symptoms from his long covid. But he got the bivalent covid booster last Friday and true to pattern, this week he suddenly has energy again. He went from needing help just to do routine tasks like preparing food to being able to bounce between art director work for the latest Schlock bonus story and getting sketches done. We expect him to have this level of energy for a month or two, which should be plenty of time to get all the sketches done. Slow but steady. 

As we said in our last update, if you have a pressing need for me to pull your sketch to the front of the pile, simply email [email protected] and I'll do that for you. 

A Little Immortality: Schlock Mercenary Book 17

We'll be launching our next crowdfunding campaign next week. If you've never read the Schlock Mercenary comic, each book is a stand  alone story, so you can just jump on with this one. We'll have the same  level of updating and customer support as we've provided for this  campaign. You can sign up on our pre-launch page to be notified the  minute the project goes live.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/a-little-immortality-schlock-mercenary-book-17

There will be separate announcement emails for this project going out via the Backerkit Launch email system. If you don't want to receive those emails, please feel free to click the unsubscribe button so that they don't continue to annoy you. 

That's it for our current news. I think it is wise to keep myself on a two week accountability schedule, particularly with the launch of our next crowdfunding project. So your next update will be the week of Oct 24-28. 

Thank you all again for your trust in us while we take care of the last few things that we owe to you.

Sandra Tayler and the XDM2e team

Status Report #26
over 1 year ago – Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 12:24:46 AM

Greetings Backers!

TL;DR: We are behind schedule on everything that we still owe (sketched books and audiobook are the big ones) but we have resolved the things which were causing delays and hope to be wrapping things up by the end of October. If you're waiting on a sketch, please take a look at the options listed below.

If you missed getting a hardback book and want one, or realized it is a perfect gift and you know who to give it to, the books are now available in our online store: 

https://shop.schlockmercenary.com/collections/x-treme-dungeon-mastery

Details on sketches:

There isn't a shipping update this time because we have shipped almost zero packages since the last time I posted an update. This is because all of the remaining packages are sketch editions and Howard injured his hand by pushing too hard at Gen Con. It took us a full month of rest and physical therapy to get it back into working order. Then we had a trip, then we got sick. (e coli + non-covid head cold. Zero stars, do not recommend this combo. Five stars to antibiotics.)  BUT the good news is that the last bit of resting on our trip has restored Howard's hand to normal and he'll be sitting down at his drawing table today to start sketching. The process is likely to be slower than before because we're feeling wary about pushing too hard. 

We feel badly about the delay, so we've got a few options for those of you who are waiting on sketch editions:

• 1. If you have some sort of deadline by which you need your sketched book (for example, if it is a birthday gift) then email [email protected] with information about your deadline. We will pull your book to the front of the line. 
• 2. If you want to get your hands on the book now and are happy having your sketch be on a separate page, we can split your order sending your book now and your sketch when it is complete. If you want this option email [email protected] with the subject line "split my order please."
• 3. Wait patiently for Howard to work his way through the books. We really want all of these done and out the door before the end of October, so it hopefully will only be a few more weeks. 

Details on Audiobook:

I am reaching out to Tracy today to find out what his schedule looks like for the next two months. He should be home from all his convention travels and has hopefully had time to recover from any illnesses that he may have picked up at those events.

Your next update:

I will update again in two weeks. I feel like a month was too long to leave you all without info especially when the info we had was "Sorry nothing is happening." (Somehow I would feel differently if I could have reported a pile of progress after the month of silence.) I'm giving our team a shorter time until we check in with all of you again. I will report to all of you again during the week of October 10-14 to tell you about all our progress (hopefully) or lack thereof (not preferred).

As a last note, we're tooling up for our next crowdfunded project. There will be a separate announcement email going out about this later as we're testing out Backerkit's new platform called Backerkit Launch. This one is for a book called A Little Immortality, Schlock Mercenary Book 17. If you've never read the Schlock Mercenary comic, each book is a stand alone story, so you can just jump on with this one. We'll have the same level of updating and customer support as we've provided for this campaign. You can sign up on our pre-launch page to be notified the minute the project goes live.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/howardtayler/a-little-immortality-schlock-mercenary-book-17

Thank you all again for your trust in us while we take care of the last few things that we owe to you.

Sandra and the XDM2e Team

Shipping Update #5 and Status Report # 25
over 1 year ago – Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 06:57:36 AM

Greetings Backers,

It is time to give you both a full shipping report and a full status  update on all the deliverables. There are lots of details, so this might  get long. In case you just want the short version:

If you have a sketch in your order, you have until August 31 to fill out the survey which was emailed to you about what you want in your sketch. After that date we will be selecting the sketch for you. If you can't find your survey, please email [email protected] and I will help.

TL;DR: Most of your packages have shipped.  If anything was damaged or missing, email [email protected] and  we'll replace it free of charge. If you're unsure where your package  is, you can find out the tracking number by looking at your Backerkit  confirmation page (which you can find by clicking the link in your  survey email or by logging in here: https://xdm-x-treme-dungeon-mastery-2nd-edition.backerkit.com/).  If your package doesn't have a tracking number it hasn't shipped yet.  Howard is working on sketch editions. You can see streams of that  process at https://www.twitch.tv/howardtayler.  The audiobook has been delayed until fall. Details below. 

Shipping Update

Summary: 1936/2162 orders shipped, 15 unanswered surveys, 211 orders left to ship

• Level 2 Physical Book: 834/842 shipped (6 unanswered surveys)
• Level 7 Book, Bookplate, Sketch: 83/223 shipped (2 unanswered surveys)
• Legendary XDM: 30/93 shipped (1 unanswered survey)
• Legendary Seat at the Table: 2/6 Shipped
• Pre-orders: 157/159 Shipped
• Level 5 Book + Bookplate: 260/260 shipped Complete!
• Tavern Keeper Retailer Package: 10/10 Shipped Complete!
• Level 1 XDM gets a PDF: 500/505 shipped (5 unanswered surveys) Complete!
• Level 1a XDM gets Audiobook: 5/6 shipped (1 unanswered survey)  NOTE: Audiobooks are still yet to be delivered! These orders are marked  shipped because they don't have associated packages.
• Level 0 NPC: 28/28 Complete!
• No Reward: 3/3 Complete!

You'll notice that I am counting pledge levels complete if I have  delivered to all completed surveys.  I am also counting all digital-only  pledge levels complete even though we still have some digital files to  deliver to you. This is important so that I don't end up with  digital-only orders tangled up in the physical fulfillment pipeline.  Digital files will still be delivered to you as they become ready.

Full Status Report

Deliverables List

This is the comprehensive list of things we owe to you as part of this project.

• XDM2e Hardback book: Complete!
• XDM2e PDF: Complete!
• XDM2e audiobook: Delayed until fall. Details below.
• Signed Bookplates: Complete!
• Desktop Backgrounds:  I still want to get a few more of these to you, but sketching comes first.
• Sketches in books (or on separate  papers): In process! Details below.
• PDF of printable character stand ups:  Complete!
• Quest for the Tavern PDF: Complete!
• Attack on Santa's Workshop PDF: Complete!
• Game with Tracy for the 6 backers who picked that level: Complete!
• Streamed book Illustrations: Complete! And now you can watch bonus streams of Howard sketching in books.  Howard's Twitch

The Details

Audiobook:

Tracy and Sandra will revisit the schedule for the audiobook in the second half of September once Tracy has recovered from Gen Con, Emerald City Comic Con, and Dragon Con. I asked if, given his schedule, it would be better to hire out the audiobook recording, but Tracy wants to be the one to read to you. We'll have more detail on this in September.

Sketching

Howard pushed hard at Gen Con and completed all of the sketches on separate papers that we had in the queue. He interspersed with those sketches Howard also drew in the books of people who came and bought things at our booth. Unfortunately this creative push has caused some inflammation in his hand which is quite painful. Howard is taking things slow for a week or two so we can let that heal. This will slow down the sketching in books. We'll still get them done. 

We also realized that we need to not allow sketching in books to spread out over the next year or more as stragglers fill out their surveys for customized sketches. So we've declared August 31 to be the deadline. If you don't fill out your survey by that date, then you will get Artist's Choice as your sketch option. This will allow Howard to finish out the sketches and me to mail orders both in a timely fashion.

Gen Con

Our trip there and back again went really well. Driving wasn't nearly as long and boring as we feared it would be. We're excited and invigorated for new projects as soon as Howard's hand will cooperate. 

Next updates

The next portion of this project is a slow trickle of sketches being completed and me mailing them out as they are. All of which is very exciting to the recipients of the sketches, but doesn't make for particularly interesting updates.  So, unless we end up having surprise news or announcements, our next update will be sometime during the last week of September. (September 26-30)

Thank you so much for backing our project!

Sandra Tayler and the XDM2e team

Shipping Update #4 and Status Report #24
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 10:43:52 PM

Greetings Backers,

It is time to give you both a full shipping report and a full status update on all the deliverables. There are lots of details, so this might get long. In case you just want the short version:

TL;DR: Most of your packages have shipped. If anything was damaged or missing, email [email protected] and we'll replace it free of charge. If you're unsure where your package is, you can find out the tracking number by looking at your Backerkit confirmation page (which you can find by clicking the link in your survey email or by logging in here: https://xdm-x-treme-dungeon-mastery-2nd-edition.backerkit.com/). If your package doesn't have a tracking number it hasn't shipped yet. Howard is working on sketch editions. You can see streams of that process at https://www.twitch.tv/howardtayler. The audiobook has been delayed until fall. Details below. Tracy, Howard, and Sandra will all be at Gen Con next week. Come find us at booth 1849. 

Shipping Update

Summary: 1866/2162 orders shipped, 15 unanswered surveys, 281 orders left to ship

• Level 2 Physical Book: 833/842 shipped (6 unanswered surveys)
• Level 5 Book + Bookplate: 259/260 shipped
• Level 7 Book, Bookplate, Sketch: 36/223 shipped (2 unanswered surveys)
• Legendary XDM: 12/93 shipped (1 unanswered survey)
• Legendary Seat at the Table: 2/6 Shipped
• Pre-orders: 156/159 Shipped
• Tavern Keeper Retailer Package: 10/10 Shipped Complete!
• Level 1 XDM gets a PDF: 500/505 shipped (5 unanswered surveys) Complete!
• Level 1a XDM gets Audiobook: 5/6 shipped (1 unanswered survey) NOTE: Audiobooks are still yet to be delivered! These orders are marked shipped because they don't have associated packages.
• Level 0 NPC: 28/28 Complete!
• No Reward: 3/3 Complete!

You'll notice that I am counting pledge levels complete if I have delivered to all completed surveys.  I am also counting all digital-only pledge levels complete even though we still have some digital files to deliver to you. This is important so that I don't end up with digital-only orders tangled up in the physical fulfillment pipeline. Digital files will still be delivered to you as they become ready. 

Full Status Report

Deliverables List

This is the comprehensive list of things we owe to you as part of this project.

• XDM2e Hardback book: Complete!
• XDM2e PDF: Complete!
• XDM2e audiobook: Delayed until fall. Details below.
• Signed Bookplates: Complete!
• Desktop Backgrounds:  I still want to get a few more of these to you, but sketching comes first.
• Sketches in books (or on separate  papers): In process! Details below.
• PDF of printable character stand ups:  Complete! 
• Quest for the Tavern PDF: Complete! 
• Attack on Santa's Workshop PDF: Complete! 
• Game with Tracy for the 6 backers who picked that level: Complete!
• Streamed book Illustrations: Complete! And now you can watch bonus streams of Howard sketching in books.  Howard's Twitch 

The Details

Audiobook:

Originally the plan was for Tracy to record in February. Instead he got sick with a cold that gave him laryngitis for nearly two months. Then he was having to juggle between his commitment to this audiobook and his commitments to other projects. He managed to scrape his schedule clear with a plan to record in early July, but then he caught Covid. I told him to focus on recovering and we would revisit the schedule for audiobook recording in mid-September after he's gotten through Gen Con and Emerald City Comicon.  We are all committed to getting this audiobook recorded for those of you who ordered it. We will continue to provide you updates until we get it done.

Sketching

The first challenge we had with doing the sketches was figuring out how much customization Howard was going to allow. He wanted to emulate the experience of people coming up to his drawing table and Howard asking "tell me about your character" which is how he's drawn in first edition XDM books for years. We started by creating a survey which allowed backers to choose race/species, gender, body type, combat attitude, skin tone, hairstyle, hair color, facial hair, facial hair color, attire, attire color, implement, and shield. Howard also decided to do all of the sketches in full color.  He then spent a week setting up his physical spaces to allow for streaming of sketches.

There were dozens of small challenges involving cameras, cords, getting the books to lay flat, and then running practice sketches to get his brain into the right mode. But it is all running fairly smoothly now. 

We won't necessarily stream every time he sketches for XDM2e orders, but Howard is trying to do at least some streaming every week day (with about 10 days off for Gen Con travel and recovery) So far he has finished most of the Artist's Choice sketches and is diving in to all the customized sketches.

Shipping

We finally got those signed bookplates that had been holding up the shipping efforts. 

With the bookplates in hand we were able to schedule a final big shipping day.

Going forward shipping will only happen in small batches as Howard completes sketches. The process is as follows:

Howard draws sketches and Sandra carefully stacks sketched books. 

On Mondays and Thursdays Sandra has shipping days. She goes through the sketched stack and carefully records whose sketch is complete on her Master Sketch Tracking list. She also manually adds an item (either "." or "Check") to the order of the person. She then sorts orders to find the orders that are both "ready to ship" and have the manually added item.  She selects that group and pushes the button to send "please update your address" notifications.

On the next shipping day Sandra prints postage for that stack of orders and mails them out. Putting orders into packages requires careful matching of sketched book to packing slip and postage.

This is why the sketch survey sheets were designed to put the name and email of the person requesting the sketch at the bottom of the sheet.

We think it will probably be 30 working days to get all of the books sketched and shipped. We have plans to keep that process moving forward even while we're at Gen Con. Howard will spend some of his time at the booth sketching the ones people selected to have on a separate piece of paper rather than in their books.  Speaking of...

Gen Con

Howard and Sandra hit the road on Sunday. We're going to take a 22 hour road trip in order to get to the event. The decision to road trip instead of fly was made in part because the state of air travel delays and cancellations did not have us confident that we could board a plane and arrive when we needed to. In part because we are paying attention and quarantining carefully in the weeks leading to Gen Con and we think we have a better chance of not being vectors if we aren't locked into a closed plane cabin with randomly selected people right before attending the show. And in part because we haven't gone anywhere for two years so a road trip sounds kind of fun. Even if it involves crossing all of Nebraska, which I'm told is flatter than I expect it to be. No, even flatter than that. (Never been across Nebraska. I'm going to get to add some new states to my "Places I have been" list.)

At the event we will spend most of our time inside the fully-masked dealers hall, where we hope you'll come and see us.  Booth 1849. 

That's our update for now. Your next update will happen the week of August 22-27. (There is a chance I'll do it a week earlier, but that is when you should count on it.)

Thank you so much for backing our project!

Sandra Tayler and the XDM2e team

As a reward for reading all the way to the bottom, a bonus sketch!