Pre-GenCon Q&A in 7/15/2019 Kickstater Comments - +more! https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2238550/pre-gencon-q-7152019-kickstater-comments-moreGeneral & Updates
Adam: I just want to say, I am personally sorry to give the impression that I have been doing anything less then bust my ass on this project everyday. I think I can get so lost in the work and the day to day, I can forget what it's like to just be excited and what to hear something ANYTHING about what's going on.
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Q/HaleysRedComet: I know that I have lots of faith in you and your product, but can understand that people feel worried when they don't have a ton of communication about what's going on. Especially when you can look around at other miniature game KS projects and see that months without an update precedes a project failure. Is it possible to have a chart with where the remaining parts of the campaign are (similar to the one that was around in the first KS)?
A: I totally hear you. My commitment to my promises and the quality of the content is paramount. Nothing will separate me from delivering what we kickstarted together.
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Adam: The Encounter system made it to V8 before I liked it. To me, it was as critical as any other part of the game as it expands our ability to create stories for and players to experience and interpret.
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Q/John Harder: Will there for sure be a big update in August (and not Black Friday like last year)? Thanks!
Also, will there be an Echoes of Death Vol. II?
A: Yes. Update is currently being word on and will go up before or during the show. If for some reason that plan changes, I will update with whatever is ready at that time and provide a new date for the update. No comment on the other question!
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Q/Css: Are we getting GenCon interviews this year too?
A: I welcome anyone that want's to interview me, I try my best to make time for it!
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Q/Gate: Will the build guides on build.kingdomdeath be updated in the future?
A: Yeah, I apologize about this one. I've been keeping the team busy on other tasks so haven't found an opening to set this up. Next time we have a lull in model design I'll make sure another update goes out.
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Q/Robert Owen:
1) Would you ever consider doing a behind the scenes video, blog, whatever of the process of going from pitch to actual product for either an expansion or detailing what it was like to come up with the KD:M world? I think that would be extremely fascinating to see all of the work that has to go into creating something so massive
- A: Back when we were much smaller and had a lot less fans / expectations, I thought this might be a fun idea. However, now a veteran of the process I can say with clarity that I have NO DESIRE to share the mental gymnastics, fits of emotional highs and lows, long nights staring into the monitor and often caffeine abuse that brings my ideas into reality. If there is ever a slice, that seems like it would be fun to turn into a little showcase and the time / extra bandwidth to do so. I could be into it. But the idea of like a camera rolling as I try to focus. I think I'd toss myself out the goddamn window!
2) Will we see new seasonal dice?
A: Currently there are no plans for new dice. They are awesome, but are a distraction from what I need to focus on.
3) What item from the stuff that is still to be released are you most excited for us fans to get ahold of? What is something you would consider to be a "must have"?
A: AKDM and COD have become must have's in my opinion. They set the stage for all content that comes beyond them. Otherwise I am still really feeling this Titan Bee. Oh yeah, that'll be in the update too!
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Q/Sarish124: Do you have any plans to update the FAQ to include correction for the first generation of expansions from 5 years ago?
A: Yes. I'd like to get to that soon as we get back from Gencon.
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Q/Gavin Fast: know gencon is your big show every year, have you and your team considered going to other big cons to show off KDM? Like comicon?
A: Oof, Gencon is enough. I don't understand how companies do more then 1 tradeshow a year, its insanity.
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Q/MilesMayhem: please consider attending the Essen SPIEL fair at some point in the future so that we European fans can properly worship the work you guys are doing
A: Consider it considered!
Gambler's Chest & Advanced KD:M
5) What is aKDM?
A: AKDM is the name of the game content that comes within the Gamblers Chest. It has evolved a lot in the past year and the upcoming update will shed a lot of light on it!
Is the gambler’s chest’s content different from the initial kickstarter?
A: Yes. Both the miniatures and the game content has been expanded upon significantly.
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Q/Css: Will the crimson croc be part of the update?
A: The Crimson Crocodile 100% going to be part of the Gambler's Chest.
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Q/Sarish124: Will the Gambler's chest have a nice, big box, or should we expect a cardboard one like the old expansions ?
A: Nice Box.
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Q/Gavin Fast: with the nice box that will come with GC is it just meant to hold the content that will come with it or will the insert be able to also contain the new expansions as well?
The Gambler's Chest box is set to hold its own content.
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Q/John Harder: Is the Croc a Quarry?
A: Yes. Node 1 Quarry. Same slot as the White Lion and the Gorm.
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Q/Sarish124: Does the inclusion of the Crimson Crocodile means that the Gambler's chest won't have that second encounter creature you had planned ? Or is it on top of it?
A: The Crimson Crocodile is a pure addition to the Gambler's Chest. Both Encounter Monster Groups will still be present.
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Q/Emanuelle Avila Rodriguez: I have a question about the encounters, for this kind of monsters you can find anything? or only a specific monster? like can I find a lion cub or a young frog dog??
A: They are specific monsters. The Gamblers Chest includes the Bone Eaters and Smog Stalkers.
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Q/Greysbull: Don't know if it's true, but I heard somewhere that the Gambler's Chest is gonna have a new nemesis, called The Scope Creep Monster...?
A: Nope. It's Atnas and it was one of the hardest models to design yet. Here I thought "evil Santa" would be easy! However, I LOVE the way it turned out. Currently its one of my all time favorites and I will be showing it off in the update.
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Q/Nicholaus Clinite: Is the GC stuff going to be combined all into one booklet?
A: There will be one main book and a load of other paper assets.
Campaigns of Death
12) Is CoD still containing rules on how to make your own homebrew campaigns ?
Of course!
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Q/Alashian) Spidicules is one of the required expansions for the Abyssal Woods Campaign to work.
Will AW also address some the present issues with Spidicules to make it work well, or will we be forced to also buy CoD?
A: No, we will not force you to buy CoD in order to enjoy Spidicules in Abysasal woods. But Hopefully, there will be enough awesome stuff in CoD for you to want to pick it up!
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Q/EdgeSeeker: is purchase of the Campaigns of Death expansion the only way to get the updated content for the 1.0 expansions, or will there ever be updated versions of the initial expansions available for purchase?
A: Thats a good question that sort of comes down to product logistics. As a small company it's going to continue to become more and more tricky to keep a large live inventory. Unless an update is critical to something functioning (which I realize we still owe) I can't say for sure there will be a way to get updates to the expansions outside of Campaigns of Death.
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Q/Llez:
1; how in depth will the legacy things go? Are there major effects like subspecies of monsters or just smaller things like maybe a stronger version of acanthus being bred? Somewhere in-between?
A: It's a big setup, so that we have more freedom to release smaller and more meaningful content. It also ranges from the extremes of both of your examples. One may unlock a new campaign wherein another, grants you a new fighting art.
2; how easy would it be to reset said content? I love legacy stuff but I hate how its PERMANENT and I like to reset from zero and see where the RNG leads me again later.
A: We are building a meta layer sheet, called a "death world", it's what highly active players will use to track these campaign to campaign changes, that primarily effect new campaign generation. We want people to play KD:M, LOTS and LOTS of KD:M. And there is absolutely no shame in settlements being lost in the dark early. I want to encourage multiple playthru's and give us more freedom to design in the cycle of life and death that is survival in KD.
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Q/Lexi Ceetee: One of the things you mentioned with CoD was guidelines on creating custom campaigns. Will you be offering any formatting tools, like an editable PDF or PSD file for creating our campaigns, or are we on our own for that? Also will the advice include stuff like creating new abilities/impairments and special survivors, or will it mostly be related to story structure?
The strain system seems like a great way to organically create your own campaign variants along the lines of people of the skull/7 swordsmen/ Twilight Knight in training/etc, so will it actually have support for the occasional new campaign variant, and if not can we throw them in without disrupting the system?
1. No I won't be offering any editable PDF or PSD files. Those are all mine!!! BWa hahaha!
2. Yes. The strain system is something I am extremely happy and excited about. Its design intent is to support, encourage, and nurture replay-ability. It gives us the space to create a small piece of future content that specifically grants you a strain card for reaching a certain lantern year IN a twilight knight training campaign variant. If you wanted to play a more traditional campaign, you'd just a prefilled campaign card.
Wave 3 Logistics
1) What’s the current estimate for Wave 3 shipping.
A: It’s still currently TBA. My hope was to have printed and on boats around now, but I will get into more details in a larger update that I’ll be posting soon. (Either from the Gencon Floor, or right before we leave for the show).
2) What’s the cause of the delay, has it impacted Wave 4 too?
A: I will address this in the update.
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Q/Nethear: Any hint to whether splitting content will be enforced, or a choice (i.e. extra shipping de facto, or chosen)?
A: It's extremely complicated and I currently have no solutions to acquiesce to everyones individual requests far as large scale fulfillment options goes. For now, I am seeing what sort of flexibility we might have.
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Q/Johan Kullberg: Have Kingdom Death been affected by the current trade "war" between USA and China?
A: Not as of yet. The current administration didn't push thru with the tariffs that would have affected us. But honestly, the world's gotta do what the world's gotta do. And I HAVE to do what I HAVE to do. I don't give a f*ck what happens on that front, I will finish and deliver what I have promised to everyone.
Wave 4 Expansions
3) When are the wanderers, promo and crossover content going to ship?
A: Thats planned to ship with wave 4. However, I am looking into ways to break some of that content so we can deliver relevant bits of content sooner.
4) Are the Wave 4 expansion going to include aKDM rules?
A: Where and when appropriate yes. AKDM explores a settlement and story of a particular group of cognitively advanced survivors.
6) When is the plastic board shipping? Why was it delayed?
It’s tied up with Wave 4 content and will ship with them.
7) How far along are expansions?
Some are very close to print, others (mainly Abysaal Woods content) only have there miniatures finished and outline. They have yet to see focus testing or rigorous development.
9) What’s the current estimation of each expansion’s content?
A: That’s too hard to answer quickly. Because our sculpting team has expanded along with our ability to engineer models for plastic production. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more miniatures in some of the expansions.
10) What kind of changes can we expect from the pitches 3 years ago?
A: For the most part things are pretty on point. There has been a lot of overall cleaning up and smoothing over of the bigger systemic changes to act as a base for new content for years to come. The biggest changes so far have been to AKDM and Campaigns of Death which have increased in scope and content.
11) When is the card pack happening ? what’s in it?
A: I’ll address this in the update. It’s going to be split into two, with the first part including a small core rules update.
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Q/Crimsonsun: how concrete is the finalised production of the Abyssal woods, reading you comment I'm concerned its going to go the way of the Lantern Festival, honestly I've been worried about that expansion since it was announced since there's SOOO much content in there. I have no issues waiting for it, but I'm really keen to get it! lol.
Additionally by reading between the lines of your post above are you hinting some Wave 4 items such as the Inverted mountain or the Screaming god have been moved to wave 3?
A: My vow. I will not cancel any of the content promised this campaign. It BREAKS MY HEART whenever I walk by the display case and see the hard plastic Dragon Goblin. It is, without a doubt in my mind, one of the most beautiful and amazing hard plastic kits to ever exist and it kills me on the inside the fans, backers and bakcers are not huddled around their game table, having an intense showdown with one right now!
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Q/Sarish124: Will you do an update on what's the estimated content of the expansions at this point ? Since we are a lot closer to release, kind of give us news on what changed and what's the current pitch. Ie, if you had to do the kickstarter announcement at this point of the design, how would you announce every expansions ?
There's a lot of expac that haven't been updated in over 2 years and I'm wondering how changed they are, especially since the ones we heard about had significant changes (honeycomb weaver, the ram, the GC, CoD, the red witches, etc.) What is happening with the Gryphon, the Death Armor, etc ?
A: Yeah, I'll touch base on each one. Depending on how long it takes to get everything together I might break it into two updates. One regarding wave 3 and another regarding wave 4. The plan is to tackle it all at once, which gives me roughly a week to get it all together. If I do break it up, the wave 4 update will happen in August after gencon.
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Q/Unleashed Paul: apart from the Advanced KDM which of the new expansions is most exciting for you.
A: Abyssal Woods!
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Q/Crimsonsun: Also is the Lantern Parasite Queen a Nemesis, encounter, Quarry something else not yet defined??
A: Parasite Queen is currently an optional showdown. I might switch that up and make her a Final Encounter monster. It needs some focus testing to determine what feels best.
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Q/Alashian: I was just wondering if the starting survivor satan included (as of last update) in the Ivory Dragon will interplay with other elements of the expansion?
A: Yep. There is a whole story there, I have yet to figure out to share it without spoiling too much? I'll pick my words carefully when its time to show it off. Speaking of which JAG has been working very hard on the miniature. It will be our biggest hand sculpted monster to date.
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Q/Jonathan A: Which expansions changed from the most from original pitch to current iteration? What didn't work and had to be changed?
A: We made everything work. We are perfect! This is something that will be more specifically answered in a possible project post mortem.
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Q/Lexi Ceetee: I am hyped for everything, but the thing I’m MOST hyped for is the Super Survivors! They look rad! I’m curious how the Super Survivors are handled though. Is being a Super a fighting art? A philosophy? A variant of savior? Or if you can answer, can we get some picks up Perfect DBK in the update?
A: The Super Survivors vs Perfect DBK is a showdown that takes places in a Savior's dream. It gives me the freedom to be as ridicules with the design as I like.
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Q/Emanuelle Avila Rodriguez: I also want to know if the super survivors will have some content for the dung beetle knight, like to do the super showdown
A: To play the Super Survivors content, you'll need the Super Survivors + Core Game 1.5. You won't need the Dung Beetle Knight expansion. So to be clear, there won't be content for the Dung Beetle Knight expansion in it.
Future Product
Q/Matt: When are we going to see a hard plastic Death High set? <3
A: Great Question! I don't have an answer yet tho!
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Q/HaleysRedComet: Why is the Oblivion Mosquito the best bug?
A: Because I have yet to finish the design and release the Destiny Moth yet.
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Q/Edward: Do you follow/read any of Fen's or the community edition content they put out?
A: Officially speaking, I have never read any of Fen's or any community created content and I have no idea what your talking about. Unofficially speaking, I am thrilled the community is creating and enjoying things! Personally, I don't think Fen and I see eye to eye in terms of rebalancing but I am happy part of the community is enjoying his contributions!
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Q/Gerrit: Speaking of the Lantern Festival. Are there plans to release the plastic King without any game content?
A: Thats been on the table a few times, Especially around Black Friday wherein we could prob get away with any exception. But I don't know, I really feel like it deserves content so I end up shying away. Who knows, maybe this year we'll push out a "naked" version of it. (Just the plastic sprue no packaging etc.)
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Q/Rawrkanos: Are there any plans for Kingdom Death: Titan once KD:M has finished fulfilling?
A: I'll see what I can do about Titan. I think its one of the few projects I can let someone else Lead. If that works out, it might be able to be developed alongside other things, instead of waiting for me to be available.
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Q/Uri: since someone mentioned Titan below; and you've talked a little about Labyrinth in interviews last GenCon: what is the status of KD 2D? I'm also interested whether the idea to make KD Quest is still alive, and if so will it be a mass-market version of Monster, an in-between and/or test version of Labyrinth, or something different altogether...
A: All of these projects are alive, but honestly do not have the same priority level that those of the projects promised during this kickstarter have. They are, sort of one day off in the distance kind of things.
Non-Kingdom Death
Q/Makura: Heard about Middara ? Any chance for a crossover with them to surprise us during their campaign ?
A: I am SO proud of Mr.Lundberg! I have yet to get a chance to actually play Middara, but I am over the moon thrilled that he pulled it off and got his dream game out there, it's no small or easy task! I had to admit, that the timing is very bad for me and I certainly cannot promise if there is going to be a crossover. Right now I am very focused on us and its hard to really do anything external to that.
