Progress Update (short and sweet)
about 4 years ago – Tue, Mar 03, 2020 at 11:40:21 PM

Hello backers!

It's the 3rd of March… I know, I'm 2 days behind schedule on my monthly update (the last was published Feb. 1). I encountered even more unexpected MAJOR changes that all seemed terrible at first but have actually become somewhat of a blessing! Let me catch you up to date on all the drama.

Previously you were all informed that I had been searching for a warehousing and shipping partner to handle my projects and was debating on ordering product to ship from the new location. That has not yet been done… and here’s the life-changing reason why: less than six weeks at the new location, we were FORCED to vacate the premises due to a legal resolution against the landlord of the property. We had NO IDEA this was coming when we moved in but there were zoning law violations and a litigious next-door neighbor… when it was all said and done, we were given exactly two weeks to get out of Dodge.

Any of you who has ever gone house/apartment hunting with a family knows it can be time consuming under the BEST of circumstances, which we definitely did NOT have. It was not a good day. We expended furious effort, called in every favor we could, and - somehow! -  managed to make things happen in time… with surprising side effects that ultimately, FINALLY worked in our favor.

By happenstance, I moved to a larger city. I quickly discovered 3 important things:

1. A thriving D&D community with 20 or more active tables at each gaming shop in town!

2. A nice new home with MUCH faster internet *which had been crippling my uploading ability and productivity for $10 LESS than the previous location. How crazy, right?*

3. The new location has a workshop in the back yard with FULLY CLIMATE CONTROLLED STORAGE with more than enough room to warehouse new inventory, new products, pack/ship in house. My local USPS offers direct pick up so when I put all of your packages *or any others* in the mail they will come and get them for me.

We move into the new house this weekend; internet will be installed by Saturday and I'll be able to get back on track with your deliveries!

Having my own climate-controlled storage and shipping location will solve the majority of my issues.

I know sometimes a Kickstarter hits a bump in the road but this one slammed into a street full of potholes right after we shipped out those last packages. Finally, FINALLY, we’re shaping back up and seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for this project.

As for Leather Editions, we have found someone who can make them for a fairly reasonable price and he's sent me some of his other creations as proof that he is skilled with leather working, we've seen some early pictures of the book and it still needs some work before he sends it to us for hands on testing BUT it's looking good!

TL,DR:, we moved so we could make this a full-time business and unexpected, unforeseeable, AND unavoidable PROBLEMS arose that were out of our control. Our shipping was significantly delayed and our ability to communicate all of this with you was significantly crippled. Those issues are MAGICALLY being resolved and we'll be back on track soon.

You can’t imagine how much we apologize for the delays you've all seen; I understand it's frustrating to see half of the project backers get their packages and then everything just grinds to a halt. We ARE going to send your packages out absolutely as soon as we can. I want to give you a hard date, but after the unforeseen drama we just navigated, I don’t want to make ANY promises until I have everything in hand. I'll just post images of the goods as I said before.

Please stand by for more good news… and again, THANK YOU for everything you've done to get us where we are. If you have any questions please message them to me directly, I'll try to answer them as best as I can. If anyone sent me a question that wasn't resolved in this update, please know that I had some issues with lost emails and I might not see anything until I get notifications about comments being posted. I've been trying to reply back to them as I find them.

Have a good March everybody! (It’s GOT TO BE BETTER!!)

-Session Zero Games

January End of Month update!
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 01, 2020 at 10:49:45 PM

Hey backers! Sorry for the delay on updates and deliveries, but after physically moving so far across the country (yes, I’ve realized that the Christmas holiday was NOT the best time to make the move!) there's been a lot more work to get things moved over and up-and-running at our new location than expected.

We're still trying to settle on adequate and cost-effective inventory storage; for now, it seems that we'll be having to send out packages from our own house. NOT ideal for the quantity of eagerly awaited product we have to deliver, but for the time being it's the only way we can make it work!

We moved back towards family but, if you remember, the panhandle area in Northwest Florida was decimated in October 2018 by a Category 5 hurricane… and surprisingly, it's STILL in a poor state of disrepair. That’s made it harder than expected to get certain things in a time frame that *I* am happy with, especially compared to services in a larger city.

That being said, the kids are happy to be back around family and we're happy to be home :) We're going to have our inventory stored in a reasonably-priced climate-controlled facility so we can guarantee it won't be damaged by the humidity over here. Plus, it’s not far from home so we'll be going back and forth grabbing what we need then packaging and shipping from the house in small batches :)

I know, this isn't ideal, BUT we're still getting it done until we can figure out a more permanent solution! And everyone gets a more hands-on approach; we call that Shipping with the Personal Touch.

As soon as we get all of that under way, we'll post another update with an accurate time frame when packages will start shipping again. Thank you for your patience and allowing us this bit of leeway in an already well-behind-schedule project. We’re in the Making Lemonade part of life right now; small companies like us have to make it work as best we can!

More updates coming with pictures of packages soon!

-Session Zero Games

Delays, still working on shipping!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jan 03, 2020 at 02:02:12 AM

Hello Backers, sorry for the silence over the holidays we had an emergency move across the US and have been out of contact with no proper internet until today! We sent out as many packages as we could before Christmas, that was a mixture of packages with plenty going out with individual books, limited edition books and cards, all kinds that we could put out. We still have a large number that need to be delivered and we're working on getting set up to continue shipping over here at the new location, for the time being we don't want to make any promises as to when we'll be able to put another 100 packages in the mail but we're looking towards 2-3 weeks before we're back up and running full speed again.

I'll be sending out intermittent packages between now and then so just keep an eye on your mailbox, whatever I have on hand will be sent out as we get it, our new location doesn't offer pick up services so we'll be having to make these small deliveries to the post office directly but it will get done! We're also talking to a warehouse about packaging and shipping remaining orders all at once but that deal is just getting started so when I know more you'll know more :)

As for types of packages we'll be sending out the remaining handful of book only along with the majority of the packages that are getting decks of cards. Big boxes will also be starting soon as we finally received our corrected large wood boxes from the manufacturer, we ended up getting all of the same type when we had ordered 4 different types of wood, it took a while but those are all in house now. The only order we're having issues with is the Leather Limited Editions, we've run through most of our options and we're talking to locals now that deal with handmade leather things, if we can get something hand made that is of high quality we'll start doing that ASAP so we can get the most expensive packages off to backers. If we can't then we'll have another update about what our options will be at that point.

Again, apologies for the delays! We're working as hard as we can and I just went full time (instead of 1/3 time) working on Session Zero Games. Now that we're settling in at the new location we should be able to output exponentially more work with my focus solely on this business instead of split between 2 or 3 others. Thank you for backing our projects and supporting our ideas, we couldn't be doing any of this without you and we might be behind schedule but we're working as hard as we can for you!

-Session Zero Games

Shipping Update :)
over 4 years ago – Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 09:45:03 PM

Hello all you amazing backers!

First off, our apologies for the extended silence. We're in the middle of so many projects right now that we get lost trying to complete all the work and get them out to you as quickly as possible. Sometimes we don't stop to update everyone enough! We promise to do better!

SHIPPING UPDATES!

Packages are still going out! We had a few unforeseen setbacks with scheduling and some supplies being damaged by water (never acceptable!) and a brand-new complication: our printing company actually sent us books that had OUR cover but DIFFERENT internals from a completely different company! We have to admit, we’ve never seen THAT ONE before!

Even with unexpected surprises, we're still getting things out as quickly as we can while continuing to work on our other great in-production projects. We’ve got about 20 packages left that are just standard books, but we shipped about 50 total orders on Monday (including 30 packages of limited edition only books).

Right now, we're waiting on more shipping supplies; we expect delivery this weekend so that we can get the rest of the "book only" packages in the mail, followed quickly by the larger packages with decks. It’s a bit slower than we planned, but we're still getting things done. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause; rest assured, we’re making sure top quality products you expect arrive as soon as absolutely possible!

As a combo "please forgive us / thank you for working with us" reward, I'd like to offer everyone a PDF copy of our new Barbarian Class Deck from our Decks of Adventurer's Allurement!

I know that won’t put your physical rewards in your hand any faster, but I hope it shows our heart is in the right place and we're working as fast as we can. We’re still a small company, so there’s only so many hands to go around :) but with the incredible products we’ve put out and even more amazing things coming up – and your continued support behind us – we expect some incredible growth in 2020!

It’s all thanks to you and our loyal, enthusiastic supporters. Because of you we’re more successful than we imagined and that means even more of the projects you’ve enjoyed will be heading your way in the future!

-Session Zero Games

Click the image below to get a copy of our Print & Play Barbarian Deck from DTRPG, this link is only valid for 7 days so grab it now while you can! Also don't forget to check out our Roll20 offerings, the Barbarian is live there and Bard will be going live as soon as it's approved!

Big Update October!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 07:23:14 PM

It's almost Halloween!

I hope everybody is having an excellent month so far :) Below is a short bulleted list of the things we'll be going over in this update so you can jump through bold headings and find what you're interested in! I hope having updates like this helps since we can include lots of stuff into one big email that you see instead of a lot of little ones through the month. 

-Shipping Progress

-Class Deck Previews and Pre-Orders

-Harold's Herbology Handbook

Tome of Magical Mystery Shipping Update

We've had a few issues with one of our orders of shipping boxes and several have been returned where the included sticky glue that's supposed to hold the packages closed has been coming undone, we've rectified this by just adding triple layers of tape around the opening and this slowed us down a little but not a lot. We're also doing all of the packages that are the Tome only with media mail shipping, this is a much slower shipping process but we have received feedback from multiple people saying their packages have been arriving. If you're in that first batch we sent out and you're still waiting (the US only, Standard Tome only) then give it another week or so and send us a message if you haven't seen your books yet. 

We had a few complaints about print quality, specifically about our Tier 4 art for items in the book which the theme color was dark by design. The printer we used for our first batch of books had a darker print quality than we expected and looked a bit darker than our test prints, they told us the individual print runs use a different process than their bulk prints but side by side it wasn't a huge difference after we had them in hand. Our only course to rectify this (which effects the art quality a little but the cost a LOT) would be to go with a different printer who does high count prints with glossy pages and color correct the images ourselves by lightening them up but the extended time and cost just doesn't add up to the quality improvements we'd receive. We just have to take this in stride and YES you will be getting good books these aren't "bad" or anything like that but we wanted to address the issues with backers since it was brought up once already rather than try to hide it. We're going to shy away from darker prints that look great on screen but might not look as good on paper in the future but these have their own quality that we love :)

PDF's should have been delivered to everyone for use so far, we're waiting now on the next batch of books to arrive and we'll be continuing shipping as soon as those and the extra cards we needed also are in the warehouse. Things are moving forward even if slower than we hoped! This was my first big book run so bear with me!

Class Deck Previews and Pre-Orders

If you missed out on our Decks of Adventurer's Allurement (which are class based magic items for 5E) then you have the opportunity to Pre Order what we are making at the link below and I wanted to share with you the progress of the project along with some previews of what we're doing that separates them from the universal items we made for the Magical Mystery line. 

https://doaa.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

The class decks themselves all revolve around magic items that are curated by special "class ambassadors" that each have their own style and appeal. Think of them as the highest level most powerful person in a certain class looking back on their favorite items and detailing why they're useful to your specific character class. You'll find on the Barbarian cards some references to "Skyos" the Barbarian Half-Dragon who curated the barbarian list along with a card dedicated to some story about that person. 

Each class deck has cards that are universal, a handful which don't specifically reference something like "Rage" for a barbarian but most of the cards full benefit will be specially suited for the class it's made for. A Rage Forged Torch is still an Ever Burning Torch for anyone who would need to use it but in the hands of a Barbarian it becomes transforms from a useful if mostly harmless item into a weapon of pure burning fury!

There are going to be items as we said that are universal and part of what we're doing with these is making sure the theme is still 100% fitting for the class it's made for BUT also brings something to the table for those who might not specifically have a Barbarian (or other class) ability. In this instance you'll see the usefulness for many classes built into the Chaos Cleaver below :)

Now that you've seen a few of the cards for the Barbarian deck let me break down exactly what it is you're looking at so that each other deck might make more sense. 

You'll find that each card has it's own style of with a color coding, a symbol and different narrators each with their own way of telling about their favorite or most useful items. The book will have further expanded areas with each "chapter" being a full introduction to the character narrating the deck and followed by the entire deck at length with each page showing off 2 items with full story and mechanics.

So, as you can see these will be very different than the much more standard and universal items found in the Tome of Magical Mystery, be sure to pick up the pre-order and you'll receive your items when the rest of backers do as they all ship out! PDF's are expected to be delivered as they get finished, Barbarian/Bard/Cleric may be done as soon as Halloween and the rest will quickly start rolling out now that we've got all of the templates set up and 500 of the 600 art pieces finished! We are doing everything we can to get all of this ready for a PDF release to everyone in early January and the prints out as soon as they show up after that. https://doaa.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Harold's Herbology Handbook

Deep Dungeon Games is in the final 24 hour stretch for funding and has already hit the $30,000 stretch goal which blimps the book up with an additional 70 pieces of art! It's going to be about 175 pages already including 200 consumables, hundreds upon hundreds of custom pieces of art and ridiculously fun flora to bloom throughout your world and bring it to life like never before!

Go check it out now and get the PDF at least, it's worth EVERY PENNY at only $15! Use the link below or click the images to go visit the Kickstarter now while you still can!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepdungeongames/harold-the-halflings-herbology-handbook-fantastic-flora?ref=dk6s75

More updates coming as we move forward with shipping, thank you all so much for your support and we'll get things out to you in one piece with no bumps and scratches and looking as good as we possibly can! 

-Levi