Sea Monsters: 60+ savage creatures of the deep for DnD 5E

Pirate Campaign Compendium printing, and final files are up! Plus Asian Monsters ends TOMORROW NIGHT!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Jul 02, 2021 at 12:04:49 AM

Hi everyone, quick update time for you! 

• Sea Monsters is printed and is boxed and palletized and awaiting its turn to ship! The printer is sending me six preview copies via FedEx and I'll be testing the wind and spinning the rudder of fate to see who gets these early copies! Our very first print backer will get one for sure, but other than that pray for fair winds and following seas that one of them might be sailing its way to you soon! We'll share pictures as soon as those early copies arrive! 
• The Pirate Campaign Compendium was finalized with the printer at the beginning of the week (we had a lot of back and forth on some things, complicated by our layout person moving during the process) and it's printing now. We also just finished the final updates to the "web" PDF (we were focused on the print files first), so that is now live and up on both DrivethruRPG and Backerkit for you to download at your leisure! 
• Last but not least, tomorrow is the final day of our Asian Monsters 5E Quick-Starter! It all ends at 7 PM PT/10 PM ET Friday night, with 112 fantastic pages and nearly 100 monsters from across Asia ready to drop into your D&D campaign! This is the biggest bestiary in our Legendary Monsters series so far and we hope you'll check it out and share the good word with your friends and fellow gamers who might be interested. As with all of our Quick-Starters, PDFs go out as soon as the project ends! 

Quickstarter Printing Updates!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 08:38:47 PM

Hi all,

While we are pleased as punch to have offered instantaneous fulfillment on all of our PDFs for the three Quick-starters we've run so far this year, we also have print books on the way, and since many of you have backed more than one of them, it's time to give you a rundown of their status with the printer! 

1.  Mythos Monsters: It took a little longer than expected, with some back and forth after our review of the ozalids and plotters in May, but it looks like we've tracked down and fixed every last bit of page bleed, transparency, resolution artifact, and stray bit of punctuation. The final fix files went back to the printer last Friday and were signed off on Monday, so the Mythos Monsters books are at long last going to print!

2a.  Sea Monsters: We had several additional review passes and are on the cusp of finalizing that book for print. Everything is final except for literally 4 pages, each with an italics error. Once the file is back from layout, it's ready for print.

2b.  Sea Monsters (Pirate Campaign Compendium): This book was approved for print on 6/1, but when we did our final review of Sea Monsters, we then had to put a hold on that so we could make sure that corrections found in that book could be fixed in the big hardcover book at the same time. We also found 3 errors in the spells section, including one spell that didn't seem to be on anyone's spell lists! Fixed! Once we get that file re-export from layout, it'll be going to print as well.

3.  Battlemasters & Berserkers: Ozalids and plotters were reviewed and approved May 31. Those books are now printing. Yeah, the Kickstarter book we did most recently is actually the one that got finished fastest.

Lessons learned have made us much faster, and seeing the response to the projects we've created we are no longer starting with the expectation of doing a small batch of print-on-demand books but can now plan from the get-go on doing a full print run, so we can get the logistics moving much faster. With Mythos Monsters, we weren't quite sure (heck, we even redid the cover art). Now we are.

Oh, speaking of sure, there is one more thing...

4.  Asian Monsters: The first draft layout is complete and I spent most of today going through the numbers with a fine-toothed comb, tracking down some missing artwork (it's all done; just it hadn't gotten sent to layout), and

Wait, a minute... Asian Monsters? Yes, Asian Monsters!

Yes, the Asian Monsters Quick-Starter is ready to launch, with 112 pages over 90 creatures from across Asia, created with the assistance of over a dozen Asian authors, artists, and consultants with roots in 8 countries to make sure this book is the very best it can be! We are prepared to launch tomorrow, though we've been working with a marketing company to assist with promotion and we might slide it back a week to maximize the effectiveness of their work with us.

We definitely encourage you to sign up to follow the page, because whether it's tomorrow or next Wednesday you're definitely going to want to check out this spectacular monster book, our biggest Quickstarter bestiary yet, locked and loaded and ready for instantaneous PDF fulfillment as soon as the campaign ends, and with a big head start on the print process! Share the good news with your friends and we hope you love this new monster book too! Follow the project at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendarygames/asian-monsters-90-magnificent-monsters-for-dnd-5e

Asian Monsters Quickstarter is LIVE!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 06:36:23 PM

To follow up on yesterday's update, we wanted to let you know that the new Asian Monsters Quick-Starter is now live and ready for you (and already funded in just 9 minutes)! 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendarygames/asian-monsters-90-magnificent-monsters-for-dnd-5e?ref=9zc9jq

We thank you so much for your amazing support and are excited to keep getting bigger and better with our Quick-Starters. As noted yesterday, we should have our files for this new book in to the printer for review by this weekend, so we're well ahead of schedule there, and of course PDFs will be ready for download immediately following the project's completion on Friday, July 2nd! 

We love and appreciate each and every one of you and hope you'll share the good news about the new project, and we've even got special pledge levels for people to catch up on any of our Quickstarters like this one that they might have missed in the past! 

Ozalids and prepress samples received for Sea Monsters!
over 5 years ago – Thu, May 13, 2021 at 03:00:43 PM

Hi all,

FedEx delivered a set of treasures today from the printer! Ozalids arrived, which are basically high-gloss printed samples that show off what the book pages and covers will look like in the final print. They send over a random selection of pages and we review them for color to make sure everything is processing as it should. They also send over a "dot proof," basically a low/moderate-quality printout of the full book that we can check visually. Sometimes holding it in your hands you find things you just don't see on screen. I'll review these and send approvals back to the printer tomorrow and, unless there's some change needed, they'll push the big button on the printing press and start the books moving! From there, they'll be boxed and palletized and prepped for their trip across the sea to us. Once they arrive, likely in early/mid July, we'll start sending them out to you! 

Sea Monsters Print sample pages on the way!
over 5 years ago – Thu, May 06, 2021 at 02:03:51 AM

Hi all,

I got an email today from the printer saying they are now sending over the color print proof samples for the book. They should arrive in a few days and I'll post up pictures when they do so you can see how everything is looking in beautiful living color! Generally they pull out 16 random pages to get signed off as a color and clarity test to make sure everything is beautiful before they push the big red button on the printing press. We are excited to see them and share them with you!

Thanks again for your support and we hope you are as delighted with the final book as we are!