BORDERLANDS AND BEYOND PREVIEW: MYRMIDONS
over 2 years ago – Sun, Oct 03, 2021 at 10:48:00 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

We didn’t want to announce our next project without accompanying the announcement with some good news as well as some eye-candy. Earlier this week, our container shipment of Iron Kingdoms: Requiem rewards arrived in port and cleared customs. The only thing standing between the books and our warehouse is the availability of a truck driver, which these days is much more rare than you might think. But we’re much closer than we were a few weeks ago and our team is ready to begin packing your rewards as soon as they make the short journey form port to PPHQ.

Knowing that we’re so close to being able to ship your rewards, and thanks to your magnanimous patience and generous support, we are moving ahead on our originally-planned schedule with the next Iron Kingdoms RPG Kickstarter campaign, Borderlands and Beyond.

Iron Kingdoms: Borderlands and Beyond will launch on Tuesday, October 12th and will run through Thursday, October 28th. We’ll have lots of previews along the way and expect to be able to deliver the PDFs of the three new books featured in the campaign before the end of the year. In light of recent events and the ongoing global transportation issues, we’re estimating delivery of the physical rewards at a conservative June timeframe, but secretly we’re planning for much earlier than that.

The next project will resemble the Iron Kingdoms: Requiem campaign in structure, with an all-in pledge of $100 for the three new books. For the Early Birds, there is an all new Borderlands-themed GM screen with brand new art. And this time around, we have miniatures in our stretch goals, with a new character featured in the upcoming Shadow of the Seeker adventure opening up about every $100k of funding, and which will be added for free to the rewards of the Paper GM and Early Bird rewards.

We would love for you to check out our launch page and sign up to be alerted when the Kickstarter campaign goes live. With your support we’ll maximize the early campaign momentum and have the best chance at opening as many of our exciting stretch goals as possible.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/privateerpress/iron-kingdoms-borderlands-and-beyond

In the meantime, we’ve got a preview from the upcoming Borderlands and Beyond sourcebook, featuring the warjacks of Ios, also known as Myrmidons.

And once again, thank you for backing Iron Kingdoms: Requiem, and for your incredible support. We can’t wait to launch this next project and show you everything we have in store.

NOTE: ALL PAGES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A 'WORK IN PROGRESS'. NOT YET FINAL.

(And if you see something out of place, please drop us a note in the comments!)

OUR SHIP HAS SAILED!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 08, 2021 at 12:21:12 AM

Greetings Adventurers! 

We have just received confirmation this morning that the cargo ship bearing our container of IKRPG books and materials finally set sail on September 4th. This puts the current ETA to our warehouse as October 15th. However, U.S. ports are still experiencing significant congestion, so depending on how that improves or worsens in the coming month will determine the potential for further delays. But one step at a time! We are at this point just thrilled to be moving after such a lengthy delay.

In the meantime, if you didn't happen to catch it last week, we began the first of a series of Iron Kingdoms: Requiem author interviews. You can catch our interview with author, Chris Handley, here!

We'll keep you posted with updates and news as they develop. Until next time, be safe and well!

DIGITAL REWARDS and SHIPPING UPDATE
over 2 years ago – Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 03:51:24 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

We are very pleased to announce that the GM Toolkit and Form-Fillable Character Sheet are ready to download from your Backerkit accounts. Simply log in to Backerkit and navigate to your Downloads section and click the download link. Or, wait until the emailed link from Backerkit hits your inbox and jump straight there.

We hope you’ll be pleased with both documents today, especially the GM’s Toolkit which went from being a smattering of PDF stretch goals to quite an eclectic tome of Iron Kingdoms information and utility!

GOOD NEWS! ONE STEP CLOSER TO SHIPPING

For those following the saga of the transportation delays, we’re happy to say that last week we were able to secure a container and the shipment was delivered to port with passage booked on a ship. If (and it’s a big IF) the carrier stays on schedule, the shipment should be loaded tomorrow and we would expect it to reach our own warehouse at the end of September. These are uncertain times when it comes to transoceanic shipping, though, and any number of things could cause interference and further delays, but we’re monitoring the shipment every step of the way and will let you know with a rejoicing “Huzzah!” the moment the shipment sails.

GOING FORWARD

Once again, I want to thank you for the outpouring of support and the overwhelming encouragement to move forward with our Kickstarter plans and publishing schedule. We are going to reserve our decision a while longer while we watch to see what happens with the current shipment, but we are thankful for your generosity and feel blessed that your confidence in us is unshaken. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

I also want to add that we are exploring domestic options for printing, but the difference in the cost-of-goods ends up being about two-and-a-half times more, which is a significant increase. I also want to add, though, that we have been working with our current vendor for nearly 15 years and they have always produced excellent quality, meet their schedules, and have taken very good care of us over more projects than I can count. In no way are they responsible for the delay, and more importantly, if it wasn’t for their hard work and help, I don’t know that we’d even have a container for the shipment at this point. We must, of course, take the global transportation situation into consideration, but we are hopeful right now that it will resolve before we would send our next books to press and we know we’re in good hands with this printer with whom we have enjoyed a very long and successful relationship. We very much appreciate all of the great input, though, and please know we’re looking at all options in the future to ensure both the best quality and timely delivery of rewards.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Next up in our queue are the digital Token Graphics and Character Portrait stretch goals. And meanwhile, we’re reviewing applications for the VTT Content Manager contract and hope to be reaching out to folks soon about that.

Always more good things to come!

Until our next update, be safe and well and thank you again for your inspiring support.

MASSIVE UPDATE: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY
over 2 years ago – Fri, Aug 13, 2021 at 08:17:11 PM

Greetings Adventurers!

We have a massive update with lots to share. I’m going to dive right in and get the unsavory stuff out of the way so we can get on with the good news.

THE UGLY

As you likely already know, global transportation is a huge mess right now, and companies all over the world are experiencing significant delays in their shipments from overseas. Lack of workers has caused major port congestion, which has contributed to a scarcity of containers in China with which to ship goods. And the IK RPG books are caught in that jam-up.

Our originally expected delivery date was the first week of August. We expected to be shipping out your rewards by now. Everything was printed six weeks ago, but we haven’t been able to get the goods shipped, despite our vendor’s best efforts. We have been holding out hope that we would still get the shipment by the beginning of September and would be able to start delivering by the end of the month, but that hope has sailed (unlike your rewards).

Monday, we received notice that if we were willing to drastically overpay the shipping costs, we might be able to get the shipment out by the middle of August. This revealed another contributing factor of the transportation issue: the shipping companies are selling spots in line, commanding exorbitant fees. For us, this amounted to an increase of approximately 20% of our cost to produce the entire print run, but the alternative is that the goods could be sitting in Hong Kong indefinitely, which is an untenable situation. And so we have authorized the additional payment to get the shipment moving and are holding our breath until we get word (hopefully next week) that the shipment actually goes out. Unfortunately, the logistics service handling the shipment won’t guarantee that we’ll make it on the ship, but at least now we have a chance, and we’ll update you as soon as we have word.

We are deeply sorry for the additional wait time. Please know that we are doing everything we possibly can to receive the shipment as soon as possible.

THE BAD

We are well into development of the next trio of Iron Kingdoms RPG books that will explore the wilds on the edges of civilization and add warlocks and warbeasts and a host of new monsters as well as an all-new campaign to the setting. And our plans all along were to bring this new project to Kickstarter in October after your rewards were delivered. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Our dilemma now is one that we are seeking your input on: do we stick to our schedule, or do we postpone until your original rewards are in your hands? Normally, our policy is to not launch a follow up campaign until all rewards have been shipped for the preceding project. But if we wait for the shipment to arrive, even though we’re hoping for sooner than later, it will push out the release of the upcoming books by whatever delay we do end up experiencing.

For us, the feelings of our community on this matter are paramount. If sticking to our schedule undermines the faith of our backers in our ability to deliver, then we will delay until all rewards are delivered to us and properly shipped to you. But if keeping to our schedule of new releases so there is as little time between them as possible is important to you, let us know in the comments below. Either way, we’ll be showing you some of  the things we’ve been working on very soon.

THE GOOD

There is lots of good! Let’s start with all of the stretch goal rewards Iron Kingdoms: Requiem.

The form-fillable character sheet and the GM’s Toolkit PDF will be delivering before the end of August. It has really come together as a fantastic supplement, weighing in at a meaty 94 pages of new content. With an extensive timeline of Iron Kingdoms history to new details of Corvis, guides to languages, currencies and symbols, and much, much more, this potpourri of lore, characters and encounters is going to add countless hours of content for GM’s to draw on. We just have a few tweaks to the layout to make and it’ll be ready to download, so watch for an upcoming update. (Check out the preview pages below!)

Meanwhile, as mentioned above, we’re working and the next three books in the Iron Kingdoms 5e series: Borderlands & Beyond, which focuses on adventuring in the wilds of the Iron Kingdoms and introduces ‘Iron Kingdoms’ warlocks, new inhuman races, new classes and of course, warbeasts; The Borderlands Survival Guide, a resource for Game Masters that introduces new option rules to the Iron Kingdoms covering things like diseases, adventuring complications to test the survival skills of your characters, and many other rules options, as well as dozens of never-before-seen creatures as well as a few old favorites; And Shadow of the Seeker, an all new campaign that dares to venture into the mist-shrouded ruins of Ios, left shattered in the Claiming. These three books will comprise our next Kickstarter project — date TBD!

And that’s not all! October is already the best of all months for many reasons, but it only gets better with Free RPG day on October 12th. In celebration of Free RPG day we’ve created an all new adventure that you’ll be able to score for, yep, FREE, at participating games stores across the U.S. Don’t worry if you are unable to get your hands on a copy. Once we are allowed to offer it outside of the Free RPG Day promotion, we’ll make sure all our backers receive a digital copy. For free, of course!

But wait, there’s more! Starting in September, we’ll be introducing regular downloadable content for Iron Kingdoms: Requiem, including Man-O-War and Doom Reaver subclasses that are sure to amp up the destruction level of any campaign.  And as well, we’ll soon have another digital adventure that takes on the mind-slaving Cephalyx, adding to the myriad horrific ways a player-character can die in the ol’ Iron Kingdoms.

So, get ready for more adventuring because we have been building up a library of amazing new content that will soon be on its way to you.

And last, we are looking for a Virtual Table Top content coordinator! If you have experience managing content on VTT platforms and are interested in contracting with Privateer Press to get Iron Kingdoms: Requiem onto some of the popular services, then send a brief resume of your qualifications to: [email protected]

Note that you must possess an active business license in order for us to contract you.

We are sure to have more news soon! Until then, be safe and well! And as always, thank you for your support.

Cleaned Up Downloads Section
almost 3 years ago – Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 09:50:27 PM

Hail Adventurers! 

I've just cleaned up the downloads section, and am sending out new, nicely named files to help everyone out! The previous versions of the files (such as the previews, versions without bookmarks, etc.) have been deleted, so when you look into the Backerkit you'll only see the final files. 

You should be receiving an email with the updated downloads in the next 48 hours at most. If you don't have one Monday morning - simply shoot us a message through Kickstarter, or email me at [email protected] and I'll get you sorted out.

Matt will be back soon with a much more exciting update! 

Until next time, happy gaming!