Mediterranean Monsters & Mythology for D&D 5E

Foundry & Fantasy Grounds options added! And "When will I get my PDFs?"
over 1 year ago – Mon, Aug 14, 2023 at 12:58:15 PM

FOUNDRY AND FANTASY GROUNDS! 

We had a quick response from Backerkit Support, and they've helped us reset the survey options for the Mediterranean Monsters VTT Module, so now in addition to Roll20 and Shard you can select Foundry and Fantasy Grounds! As noted in our last update, progress has been slower on those two systems so it may be a bit before we get them done, but enough people are excited about them that we are definitely pushing forward and they are now available for you to select in your survey. Head in and adjust to your chosen VTT! 

LOCKING ORDERS AND DOWNLOADING PDFS AND VTT TOKENS

As far as the question of when you'll be able to download your PDFs from Backerkit, that happens once we Lock Orders, which does exactly what it says: Every survey that's completed is then locked and cannot be changed (well, it can, but it requires emailing me to go in and manually change each order) and credit cards are charged. Once the system verifies the lock and charge, it then propagates the digital downloads to everyone in the system.

We usually give about 3-5 days before we start locking orders, generally when we've got about a 75% return rate on surveys. Given that we had to reset the pledge question about VTTs, we definitely want to make sure folks have time to go in and edit their pledges appropriately before locking orders.  We're already at 61%, so we might be able to lock orders as early as Wednesday, but we'll see where we are. No later than Friday. Once orders are locked and charged, you'll be able to download all of your items.

LOCKING ADDRESSES

Nothing urgent for now but just as an FYI for down the road, once we have books in hand and are ready to ship, we'll do a similar process of locking addresses. We'll send out updates reminding people to double check their addresses, and we'll also send out a "Locking in 48 hours" message through Backerkit itself. If you end up moving between now and then, or if for any reason you need to send your books to someone else's address, you can go in anytime and change your address in Backerkit. Once we lock addresses, you won't be able to change them so if you have a last-minute change you can email us and hopefully we'll get the new information before your books go out.

Backerkit Surveys are out, and a question on VTTs!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Aug 13, 2023 at 01:59:59 PM

Hi all,

We sent out the Backerkit surveys this morning (we thought we sent them yesterday but forgot to click the last button to verify) and we appreciate so many of you replying so quickly! We've already gotten over 400 surveys back and we thank you for all of them! If you haven't received your survey link from Backerkit, let us know and we'll run it up with customer support over there to make sure you do! 

VTT OPTIONS

We've had questions on VTTs, because while all of our past books we were able to list specifically which bestiaries were available for which VTTs, we were not sure exactly when we'd be able to offer which versions of Mediterranean Monsters for VTT. On checking with our conversion people, the only two that looked like they'd be getting done in a reasonable time frame were Roll20 and Shard, so those were the ones we included in the backer survey. 

As a general rule, I don't like to offer things that I'm not sure when I can fulfill. If you pledge for something, I want to know 100% that we can deliver it. That's a hard-learned lesson from sometimes in the past when things have taken a lot longer than they should have. That said, we've had a number of folks asking about Foundry or Fantasy Grounds modules for Mediterranean Monsters, and I would definitely love to provide those. However, FG throughput has been slowing to a crawl over the past year and Foundry has been hit and miss when we've had people able to work on things. I'm sure both versions can eventually get done and will put this book in the queue on both sites, with the caveat that I can't guarantee exactly when they'll get finished. I *think* we can have them get them done within the next few months, but I can't put any specific date on completion. 

• If that sounds fine to you, let us know via Backerkit message or in the comments below and we can add Foundry and Fantasy Grounds options to the Add-On for the Mediterranean Monsters VTT Module. 
• If you'd rather opt for more certainty and have us change your pledge to just get the VTT tokens rather than the full module, so you can DIY using the book in your favorite VTT, let us know that too. 
• If you'd like to tweak your order in any other way, let us know in Backerkit and we'll get it sorted.

Thanks to all of you and we definitely appreciate the feedback and hope we can get everyone these monsters in the best format possible! 

EDIT: For all of our VTT fans, if you yourself or anyone you know is in interested in helping create VTT modules, we are always looking for folks to add to our team to create those more quickly and reliably for projects like these (or even just our ongoing product lines). Any recommendations or referrals would be most welcome - just send them our way at [email protected]! 

Backerkit Survey "Smoke Test" sent! Check your emails and reply ASAP if you receive it.
over 1 year ago – Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 01:18:42 PM

Hi all,

We were able to get our Backerkit survey reviewed, edited, and approved by the BK team, so we have now sent the smoke test out to a random sampling of 57 backers. Please check your emails over the next hour or so to see if you've received a link to the survey and go into the system and respond if you do. As we noted previously, this step is the chance for us to double-check that everything is working as it should and to field any questions from a small number of backers so that if a problem comes up, we can fix it before we send the survey out to everyone.

Assuming everything is A-OK, we'll send the survey out to everyone tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on editing and development, currently working on these turkeys... :)

Backerkit survey submitted! And new Drivethru sent by tech team!
over 1 year ago – Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 12:37:19 PM

Hi all,

Just a quick heads up to let you know that our Backerkit survey has been submitted for review. If we get lucky, we might get approval back tomorrow, but it might also be until next Monday or Tuesday, depending on how busy they are on their end.

Once we get the survey review back and make any recommended adjustments, we'll send out a "Smoke Test," which is a limited survey that goes out to 5% of our backers so they can reply and respond while also giving us a chance to address any glitches that might exist with those backers before we push the button to send it out to everyone. At 24 hours after sending the smoke test, we'll send the survey out to everyone. 

Fingers crossed we can send things out tomorrow or Saturday, but if not we'll definitely be able to send it out early next week. Thanks once again and we look forward to getting everything ready for you soon! Now that Backerkit is moved down the pipe, I can turn back to getting the Mediterranean Monsters book itself finished and ready for layout! 

P.S. Thanks to our friends at the DrivethruRPG tech team, they've gone through and done a new series of PDF links/downloadables sent directly from them. Log into your DrivethruRPG and hopefully all of your items should be there. As a reminder, there is no PDF yet for Mediterranean Monsters or the new adventure A Threatened Democracy, as both of those items are still in production, but all the other PDF links should be out. If anything is still missing at this point, we'll wait for Backerkit surveys to get sent and set up so that we can distribute everyone's files there. 

Backerkit survey coming soon, and one more try at Drivethru for PDF distribution!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Aug 09, 2023 at 04:29:01 PM

Hi all,

Just wanted to update you on progress:

1.  Backerkit: We're progressing along nicely on our Backerkit survey and should be submitting it for approval by tomorrow. If we are lucky, we'll get approvals the next day, but it all depends on how fast the turnaround is. We might end up having to send it out next week. We'll get it to you soon! 

2.  DrivethruRPG: We've been working with DTRPG's tech support to try to figure out why so many of those file sends glitched out. I've provided them with email lists for each PDF and they're going to try sending PDFs directly from their end. Hopefully this will get files into your hands for anyone missing theirs so far! 

3.  Mediterranean Monsters assembly! We're juggling back and forth between working on the Backerkit survey and the monster PDF, but we're cranking through as quickly as we can to get this one into layout and ready for you. We've also been continuing our preliminary work on the PF1 and PF2 versions for you and look forward to getting those slotted onto the schedule later this year!