Development Update + Loresmyth Growth + Personal Update
over 3 years ago – Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 02:27:10 AM

Hello, dear Wondrous backers! 

First off, a happy new year to everyone! ❤️ I think I can speak for all of us that 2020 was weird, challenging and that we are all ready for a new chapter right? Here's to a fantastic 2021! 

This is a lengthy update, touching on many points, grab a coffee, chai latte, ginger tea, and strap in! 

A new Loresmyth chapter

Speaking of new chapters, I talked about this briefly in the previous updates, but Loresmyth has transformed quite a bit over last year, which is really exciting. Going from a glorified hobby to a real sustainable business has been a great adventure, and every year we made steps to professionalize and up our game. Sales have grown exponentially (for once an exponential curve we do like to see haha!) and this has solidified our position as one of the leading third-party publishers of D&D materials. Our close partnership with Nord Games continues to thrive, and we help each other out where we can. Other developments are not apparently visible to you as the customer, so allow me to explain a bit of what's going on behind the scenes. 

One of the big steps was to hire part-time staff and put proper processes in place for our customer support. With a huge increase in online sales, multiple Kickstarters, and logistics, it was time to put a "real" system in place. In the past, customers had to wait a long time sometimes to get replies, order statuses and Kickstarter answers. Now we have a support ticket system and Robin who is monitoring and replying every day of the week. 

In addition, it has always been my vision that it is better to surround yourself with great talent than to try and do everything solo. For years Loresmyth was a one-man-band, I literally did everything myself which can be very taxing at times. For this reason, mid-last year I brought on board Christopher Mahon to become the new product development manager, overseeing the development of all our products (which are now 2-3 simultaneously at any moment). To meet the popular demand more consistently, and the financial requirements of having a sustainable living, we needed to scale up product development to a more professional level. Making 1 a single book per year all by myself like the "Remarkable Inns" era was simply not enough anymore. Thinking back at that period in 2017, things were very innocent I would call it, things weren't so huge and full of expectations. Now, luckily we can rely on having a ton of experience of running a company and making books, but the pressure is also higher to deliver. 

If anything, the major difference for me is instead of carrying the weight of an entire 2-year product development cycle all by myself, having someone like Christopher sharing that load is night and day. It is not only good for the product quality and business, but also for my mental health. In that sense, the Wondrous Expeditions Forests book has found itself right at this "crossroads" where it has yet to really benefit from Christopher's involvement as lead developer. This book for me will be remembered as the transformational project that is both the most ambitious thing to date, as well as the one where we are changing the company structure at the same time as making multiple projects. Two big things convening. 

As "Mr. Loresmyth" I continually stay involved, ensuring the creative vision and quality of the products are to our high standards. But the benefit is that I don't have to do every single thing myself. This frees up some of my time to focus on the strategic side of the business, as well as marketing, financing, and other non-glamorous work. 

Wondrous Expeditions Forests Update

This brings us to the development status of Wondrous Expeditions Forests. So the simple answer right now is: A lot of work has been done since before the Kickstarter launched, and it's progressing, but it is also taking a lot longer than we anticipated. Initially, this was a real bummer because I am pretty harsh with myself when it comes to meeting deadlines and having satisfied customers. Sometimes it feels like I am one of the few creators that actually delivered projects somewhat on time. 

So what happened? Aside from personal struggles (more on that below) and the COVID throwing a wrench, putting together a book is like piecing together a puzzle--you don't work your way from the top down, you put it together from all angles at once. When you do a Kickstarter and "pitch" the concept to the backers with nice promo artwork, to many it may look like a done deal: Just make that . But when you start working on it for real, it is very much like making a movie, going from a core idea to a script draft, a revised draft, to filming, re-shoots, and finally editing. Some say Star Wars was made in the editing room, and during filming, it looked like a disaster. Also, there definitely have been weeks where personal care for my mother and other pressing matters kept me from developing the book, which results in delays. All the more reason for me to make the decision to bring someone on board to help manage product development, so it is not all 100% leaning on me. 

Luckily, our current status is not looking like a disaster, and Star Wars ended up being a classic :) 

But re-writes and some reconsiderations are definitely needed. We've pulled together the first, rough yet sprawling 150-page draft of Wondrous Expeditions and looked at it for the first time as a whole product. We discovered is that, while it delivers on many of the promises made in the Kickstarter, it's missing some ingredients that set our work apart from other sourcebooks. We don't just want to put out a book about wilderness travel, we are putting out a Loresmyth book about wilderness travel. Our goal with this book wasn't just to create a forest-themed book of random tables and new monsters, it was to make the journey be the adventure. Other creators might have accepted any first iteration of the book and polished it up for release, but we want to absolutely make a fantastic book that Wows us and you. For the very first Wondrous Expeditions book (serving as a template for each that follows) this apparently needs more work than we thought. So we are now taking extra time to re-think and re-develop parts of what we have and make sure it absolutely is exciting, inspiring, mysterious, fun, and magical. It needs to live up to the legacy of our most-funded Kickstarter to date, and that is worth fighting for. 

We know delays are frustrating and worrying, but we have to be honest with you and ourselves--Wondrous Expeditions is not meant to be your average sourcebook, we want to deliver something we absolutely believe in. With that said, updates will keep coming, the current writing stage always yields little "visual" things to show, but once we are passed the revision stage, hopefully, we can start showing some more real product, and perhaps even getting backers involved with early reviews and proofreads. 

Personal Update

Whew! 

So, related to all of this, as some may now I recovered from a 2-year burnout some time ago. It has been a journey to find a new balance in work, family life, and my ambitions. I've had coaching to help me do away with old mental patterns that were not helping, and I am still learning daily. One of the things perhaps is that I should try and enjoy the Loresmyth thing a whole lot more than I am doing. For an outsider, it will look absolutely like I have a dream job/life, but I can also be very hard with myself, especially when things go differently than I promised my backers/customers. This can weigh heavy on the mind. It is easy to say you can not force some things or perhaps the product idea you had, was simply more difficult than imagined. But my brain is hard-wired to want to do better always. For this reason, I explained in more depth the changes I have been making to Loresmyth, hiring other people to help share the load, so hopefully, it will become even more enjoyable for me as well to keep creating fantastic RPG products and not get burned out. 

Lastly, also some very happy news that after 13 months my mother is finally out of the hospital. She is still very fragile and in need of constant help, but we are all happy she is not bedridden anymore.  Thanks for all the warm messages! 

SO! Whoop. What a massive update. 

Thanks for all your patience, I am very blessed with such amazing friends. 

If you want to continue this talk, please find me on Discord

Talk soon, 

Chris VDL 

Early Layout Previews & Artwork
over 3 years ago – Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 11:27:26 PM

Hello, dear Wondrous backers! 

I hope everyone is doing fine and is in good health. In the Netherlands, we went into another period of hard lockdown, so it has been another period of adjusting with having the kids home full time and my wife working from home as well. Pretty challenging! How are things at your end of the world?

Early Book Previews

After several months of writing, we got a lot of raw material in place and have started on a first rough layout of the book. This is a pretty time-consuming phase but obviously also a fun one because things suddenly start to look "real" (sorry writers! haha). We are still very much playing around with various visual ideas, but it's nice to see the first things falling into place. Big, big parts of the book have yet to be done, so we have a ton of work still ahead of us, but it was too good to not show some glimpses already!

Chapter Artwork

While most of the illustrations in the book will have a sort of "retro" TSR kinda vibe, some special sections in the book will have their own full-color painting. One of these is now done and it is so nice, we did not want to keep it from you! The artist is Konrad Krogull, check him out. 

Longer Development Time

As hinted at in the previous update, we realize that the development of this book, plus its pocket guide and accompanying card deck will take longer than we anticipated. Working during a lockdown has been challenging and personal circumstances have made it hard to stay on schedule. Initially, I tried to fight the idea of delays (being the perfectionist I am) but I realize ultimately it's more important to deliver a fantastic quality product, instead of trying to rush it out on time. So we decided it is going to take as long as it takes, while still working on it every week and trying to keep the pressure on. 

Along the way, I will keep you updated with these progress reports, so there's something nice to see! and you can see the product shaping up before your eyes.  

Join Our Discord

Have you joined our Discord community? Why not hop over and have a chat there! 

Wondrous Forests Development Update #3
over 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 10:58:59 PM

Hello, dear Wondrous backers! 

I hope everyone is having a great time, despite the pandemic making our lives a little harder than usual. Comment below to let us know how you are doing or jump into our Discord to say hi! We are back with another development update for Wondrous Expeditions: Forests, and this time it's a little more extensive than the last time. Strap in! 

Writing in full swing

For the past few months, writing has gained momentum and large parts of the book have been written as a  first draft. JVC Parry has started on writing the two adventures that will be included in the book's appendix, which are looking very interesting. As it stands, we have about 120+ pages of content, including four brand new forest types clocking in at 8+ pages each. This page count number will change as we are still are very much refining what the book needs to be about, we will trim, add, re-write, and so on but it is exciting to see it gradually come together. As with all new product concepts, it takes real hard work to define the unique style of the product, and we are definitely not taking the easy way and accepting any old first pass. 

Early Layout Work Started

With the first big chunks of the book being written, some of the writing content is automated into our InDesign book layout software. The overall look and feel of the book is coming together and we are still making more refinements, to make sure the Wondrous books have their own unique look (not a Remarkable clone). While the book is still far from being finished, we can show some of this progress so you have an idea. At this stage, it is mainly to get a first somewhat-good-looking version in place, so we can better judge if the chapters and sections make sense, and what illustrations may be needed in what places. 

First illustrations being made

Artist Daniel Comerci has started making custom illustrations for the Wondrous Expeditions: Forest book and as usual, his work is stellar. Below is an example of his work and we will continue to show more as we move forward. For the Wondrous Expeditions books, we want to have a somewhat "retro" OSR kinda feeling, and his black and white line art definitely helps get that vibe across! 

Full-color art spreads starting

Thanks to unlocking a stretch goal, we are able to have artists make several full-color "spreads" paintings for the book. Each of these paintings will cover two full pages and greatly enhance the look and feel of the book, and show the majestic nature of fantasy forests. Here's a composition sketch from one of those pieces (this one by Konrad Krogull). The first step is always to plan the composition, and the general design of the art piece. Once we have this agreed, a first color pass is going to be made, before rendering the final fine details. 

Firing on all fronts

So as you can see, we are pushing on all fronts on the Wondrous Expeditions Forests development. A first new product in a new series is always challenging, but it feels like we've pushed past the first big hurdle now, and things are starting to come together. From this point on it will be much easier to show actual progress. 

Possibly Later Product Delivery 

You know at Loresmyth we believe in honesty and transparency, bot for the good news and the bad news. We're proud of having a pretty solid track record of delivering our Kickstarter products on time. This time, we have a growing feeling that we may need more time to deliver the product and still maintain our high-quality standard.  It may seem odd to already talk about potential delays so early on in the project, so allow us to explain.

Multiple factors are at play for us to expect we may need more time. Here goes: 

1. An ambitious new product. This Kickstarter is to develop the first book in a new series. This is always challenging because you are designing something new from the ground up, as opposed to making a new installment in an existing series (such as Remarkable). We've found that already a couple of months have passed where a lot of work has been done, but we are still having many meetings and making changes to the scope, vision, and style of the book. Call us perfectionist, but we want it to de dang great! 

Also, because this Kickstarter was our most funded to date (Yay!) we also unlocked all stretch goals which increases the workload. Things such as the Pocket Guide, Card Deck, Adventures, and Maps all take time to create, making it a much larger scope than just the book. 

2. Covid Delays. You guessed it, COVID continues to play a real factor in everything we do. All our recent product developments such as Remarkable Shops and Heroic Challenges have experienced delays due to Corona affecting manufacturing, transportation, and other aspects. It is safe to assume that by the time we get this book and ancillary products ready to go to print, Covid still is around and affecting lead times. 

3. Family Matters. My mother's illness has been affecting the number of hours I have been able to work. She's been in hospital now for a staggering 13 months, and still no signs of real recovery, it weighs heavy on me and my family. While business continues as "normal" it would be crazy to say it does not have an effect. 

Our plan going forward

Please know that we are incredibly passionate about what we do, and that includes delivering on time as best as we can. As discussed in our previous update, we have already started hiring and training more staff to better deal with Loresmyth's growth. Robin joined us recently to take over customer support so it longer eats up time from me. In addition, Christopher Mono is making great progress in taking the lead on product development, so over time, I am no longer the bottleneck. This makes Loresmyth more resilient against family matters and other congestion factors, and development can keep running even if I am a few days away. As a result, we have already been able to start development on Remarkable Cults for a march Kickstarter launch, while also maintaining development for Wondrous Expeditions Forests going strong as well. This is already a major step in the right direction. 

Discuss on Discord

That's it for this update. If you want to chat more, please join our Discord community. 

Talk soon! 

Chris van der Linden 

Wondrous Forests Development Update #2
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 01:27:01 AM

Hello, dear wondrous backers! 

Ouch, it's been nearly a month since my last update. Usually, I don't let them fall so far apart but life really got in the way. That isn't to say nothing has happened (on the contrary), but I was so occupied with so many other things that the mountain was on top of me, instead of me being on top of the mountain. Here's the first update of many to break that spell! 

Loresmyth scaling up! 

With increasing success, Loresmyth has really grown from a hobby into a real business. It's quite amazing to see how much has changed in just two short years. My ambitions always have been larger than what I was able to achieve on my own, so about six months ago I started putting plans in motion to "scale up" Loresmyth. This involves expanding the team, training certain key staff into new roles, and improving our workflows so product development is happening more effectively. Historically I was able to do about one Remarkable book per year, and maybe a deck of cards. With our new systems in place, we now have multiple products in development at any time (in various stages of production) such as new Remarkable books, Dungeon Discoveries, and even more Wondrous books. 

A host of new talented freelance writers is also joining us, such as the lovely Bob Davis (Kabouter Games) and Willy Abeel (The Book of House - DmsGuild).  We are super stoked to work with them all, and more are likely to join as the new year rolls around. 

Lastly, Christopher Mahon who joined Loresmyth one year ago as PR/Social content manager is gradually taking on the role of Product Development Manager. This means that going forward, you will see him take the lead more with the development of our products, so I can take a step back in certain ways to focus on the larger picture. If you would have asked me two years ago this would happen, I would have said no. :-)  Loresmyth is and will always be my "baby", but it feels good to entrust part of the operations to someone else, cause it is just becoming too much for one person to handle. The time is right and it is an exciting progression into a new phase! 

Writing phase 1 continues 

So while all of these exciting things are happening on a business level, the development of Wondrous Expeditions Forests continues. We've been working on it solidly the past month and lots of exciting things are taking shape. Mostly these things live in a binder full of notes and a gradually filling Google Drive repository. 

Being the first "pilot" product if you will in what is to become a series, we do experience a learning curve. We had this with the first Remarkable book as well, where it takes time to figure out the style and contents of the book. This is both a fun phase where you really "wrestle" with the concepts, but also a time-consuming one. At this moment I find it hard to say if we are on schedule or not, but our ethos is to take the time we need to lay the foundations for something amazing, that we can also benefit from in future books. Ultimately, we want to deliver a stunning book. 

A big change that has come as part of our new business strategy and workflows, is that for certain products writing already starts in advance of the Kickstarter. For example, we have started writing "Remarkable Cults" (working title) last week, and the Kickstarter is not launching until March/April 2021. This way the book will be ready for production and release much earlier after a Kickstarter campaign. It also means that we are investing our own money into paying for development before any Kickstarter funds come in. This is why we only do this for projects that have a very small risk of not funding. With a new product like Wondrous Expeditions, we don't have this luxury yet and the development timelines are longer. When the 2nd Wondrous book rolls around, hopefully, we can start developing in advance of the Kickstarter as well. 

Family Matters

Some of you have been asking how things are with my mother. The hard reality is that unfortunately my mother (who's been hospitalized since December 2019) has not recovered and things are increasingly precarious. It weighs heavy on the mind and takes time out of my workweek. In addition, in the Netherlands, the COVID virus is flaring up again big time and things are in a state of (partial) lockdown. The kids are home more often, which is demanding sometimes and makes balancing work and family a little harder. I'm constantly switching between my role as a dad and running a company.

Ultimately, challenges of any kind will come and go and are part of running a company, so I'm not complaining. Just wanted to be transparent and hopefully answer a few questions some of you have been sending me through the various channels! 

Say Hello on Discord 

Haven't joined our nerdtastic Discord community yet? Come in and say hello! 

Talk soon! 

Chris VDL 

Backerkit Surveys Live
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 05:39:40 AM

Hello, dear Wondrous backers! 

The Backerkit pledge manager is now open, and surveys are being sent out. While the book has started development and we still have plenty 'o time to gather all information, we know many backers keep asking "when's the Backerkit coming?", so here we are :-) 

What is Backerkit and Surveys?

If you are new to using Backerkit, then let us explain it real quick. The Kickstarter website isn't really well set up in terms of features to manage large amounts of backer information, address changes, pledge changes, and so on. This "hole" in the market was quickly filled with companies seeing this need, as crowdfunding campaigns became more ambitious. Backerkit is a leading pledge manager service that provides creators all the tools they need to manage pledges properly, handle shipping, accept pledge changes, and much more. We can't live without it, and many backers have come to see Backerkit as being an integral and welcomed phase in a professional Kickstarter campaign. 

Provide us your information, choose any optional add-ons

The surveys to collect user data that normally happens through Kickstarter now is done via Backerkit, which allows for much more control. You can also use Backerkit to add any optional products to your pledge that you might like. 

Shipping Charges

Shipping costs for physical pledges are calculated and charged in Backerkt. This is based on your country and the items in your parcel (weight-based). If you only have digital items you will not be charged shipping.  

Charging of Cards

The actual charging of credit cards will not happen immediately, but rather in a little while from now. The actual date will be communicated as soon as we know it.

Where is my Survey?

In case you lost your Backerkit info, here is a link to recover your survey: 

https://wondrous-expeditions.backerkit.com/

Switching Pledge Levels

If you like to switch (upgrade) your pledge level, find the small link at the start of your survey screen as shown in this image. 

Thank you again for this wonderful campaign! 

Join our Discord if you have questions or just want to say hello! 

Chris VDL.