January Update
over 5 years ago – Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 01:51:57 AM

Hey all! 

A short update to touch base on the progress on Dark Matter, as well as mention a bunch of other little things we have going on (like merch!)

Last Month

The holidays really slowed us down, especially on the art front, but we still got a lot done during December:

We finished the character sheet! It's in the book's next update (going live within the next 48 hours), following the Appendices. We don't have a form-fillable version of it quite yet, but we do have a handful of character prebuild freebies for pick-up-and-play adventures. These prebuilds won't be in the final book (and might even contain some small errors, here and there), but we figured you might like to use them for your games.

Link to Prebuild Characters

We also made a smattering of small but important changes to ships and ship combat, most notably adding a system (the Hypercapacitor) that allows ships to void jump without a wizard onboard, and shifting the Arcane Cannon to rely on the Gunner role, instead of the Engineer role. These changes don't have earth-shattering implications on the chapter (each made a small tidal wave of little changes), but will make ship combat with and without a spellcaster onboard much smoother.

Next Month

Next month, we plan to:

• Finish more of that art!
• Knock out the form-fillable version of the character sheet
• Investigate rebalancing ship HP
• Complete the descriptive blubs in boxes scattered around the book

Longer Term Milestones

If there's a rate-limiting step to the book's completion, it's finalizing the full-page art on the chapter introductions. We've made good progress so far:

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Once these are out, we can push the book from Alpha to Beta. We have a small list of things to knock out in the meantime, but we estimate that finishing this art will take at least 6 weeks (hopefully no longer), which gives us plenty of time to finish things and start polishing presentation. Unfortunately, art times can be a little volatile, depending on if artists get sick or otherwise can't work (as we saw during December.) If the art causes us any delays, we'll be sure to keep you posted.

After we get the Beta out the door, we'll be exclusively working on polish and background things to get the book print ready. We anticipate more art time in here, as we adjust colors for printing, move and crop things for the page bleed, and other technical nonsense. 

Dark Matter Merch!

Over the holidays, we also got a lot of Dark Matter-themed merch onto our brand new RedBubble store! Here's some examples:

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Here's a link! We've got way more merch coming soon (literally including every race in Dark Matter), so we'll keep you updated as it comes out. 

Fixing some Preorder Weirdness

We're also rectifying some weirdness in how we implemented the BackerKit preorders for the book. Originally, we planned to give only the final PDF to people who got in on the BackerKit preorders, but we've realized this was really a silly way of approaching things, so we'll be giving everyone who pre-ordered the PDF or the hardcover through BackerKit access to the Alpha as well.

If you don't have access to the Alpha, but preordered a hardcover, you can expect a link to it soon!

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Keep playtesting and happy gaming!

December Update
over 5 years ago – Mon, Dec 03, 2018 at 09:15:59 PM

This'll be a quick update, just to let you know that we're still working hard on Dark Matter. 

What we did in November

Last month we launched the Alpha version of Dark Matter, which has been met very positively. We've gotten a lot of feedback and we've got a lot of polishing incoming. We also finished the redux version of the alchemist class, which will be sent to everyone who got the Starter Pack when the Craftsman is also reworked this month. 

Also last month, we've been working hard to get the chapter introduction stories finished, along with remainder of the art:

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What we're doing in December

This month, we'll be updating the Dark Matter alpha with fixes and art updates by the 15th, and we'll also be releasing a comprehensive changelog. We also plan to finish the Dark Matter character sheet and begin working on the newly-revised world map. Last, but not least, we'll keep working on art and cleaning up assets to get the book ready for a print version. 

Thanks to everyone who's playtesting Dark Matter now, creating characters, and starting campaigns. It's amazing to see, and we can't wait to get physical copies into your hands.

Alpha!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 01:07:29 AM

We’re in alpha! 

The Dark Matter Alpha should be on its way to your inbox, assuming that you opted into the beta tier (or any higher tier), and I'm extremely excited to get to the playtesting!

The current version of the book is 267 pages long, and it's hard to express how much content there is. We really pack in all the sci-fi goodness. Not only is it fully-playable, there's enough in here to keep you busy for at least a few campaigns. You all have heard us talk at length about what's in the book, but now it's time to see for yourself! Just for fun, if you make a character you're really excited to play, leave us a comment letting us know what build you went with. 

The vast majority of the book's (gorgeous) art is finished. In those few (read: three) places that are outright missing art, you'll see a friendly little sticky note letting you know. As we keep working on the book, we'll be adding to those stretch goals, adding in character names and planets named by patrons, and developing those mostly empty quote boxes into a story all their own. Of course, we'll update the book with changes, fixes, and new art as often as we can. 

If you, by chance, purchased the PDF but didn't opt in to the beta playtest, you can get into the playtest for just $5! In fact, you probably already have a download code in your inbox. If you didn't get one, reach out to us (send an email to [email protected]) and we'll send you one right away. 

That's all for now! We look forward to hearing from you as you dig through the book and start campaigns! 

November Update
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 02, 2018 at 01:57:34 AM

Good news: we're nearly ready to release the Dark Matter Alpha! I'd like to talk about what we accomplished last month and what we're tackling as we move into September, but first let's touch on what's in the Alpha:  

What's in the Alpha  

Every chapter of the book! 

This was a massive sprint to finish, but we've got more or less final versions of every chapter, including the Gadgeteer and the Appendices. We've even got most of the art finished, thanks entirely to the tireless efforts of our art team.

What's not in the Alpha  

Some of you might be scratching your heads. Weren't you promised a Beta version of the book? What's this about an Alpha?  

We're awfully close to finishing the book proper, but the version you'll be seeing will be lacking some of the finer details: there's a few placeholder assets, some of the stretch goals aren't entirely finished, people who opted to get their character or planet name in the book won't see their names anywhere, etc. As such, we've opted to deem this an Alpha, until those pieces are added. It's fully playable, though!  

The following things will be noticeably absent:  

• The Revised Dark Matter map with new planets (old version included)  
• Special character mentions  
• The Dark Matter Character Sheet 
• Chapter Introduction pages 
• Concept Art Section 
• Most of the quote boxes' text 
• Some of the art
• Table of Contents (PDF should still be indexed) 
• Copyright Page and Backer Thanks pages 

 When's it dropping? November 15th! 

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Last Month 

October was a long sprint to close in on the end of the book. Here's a bullet-list of what we accomplished since the last update: 

• We finished the entire lore/introduction chapter, which is now locked firmly in place with all of its art. 
• We made additions to the Character Options, Appendices, and Spells chapters, each of which has been reformatted to fit their new content. 
• We added two new subclasses and a handful of gadgets to the Gadgeteer class, which is now up to a respectable 4 archetypes. 
• We've reworked about 6 monsters in the Monsters chapter and filled most of its gaps with beautiful art. 
• We've rebalanced and rethought a few of the feats and added about a half-dozen to the book. 
• We reworked the Craftsman and Alchemist subclasses, in accordance with their new reduxes. (We'll send those new versions out to everyone who got the MHP Starter Pack when the Craftsman is completed next month.) 

November's To Do List 

With the Alpha dropping in mid-November, our tasks are at first going to focus squarely on getting that out in a clean fashion. When that's over, the rest of the month will no doubt involve us fielding hundreds of questions and fixing hundreds of mistakes; that's the whole point of a playtest, after all. 

While that's going on, we'll refocus on writing a lot of the story that's going to be happening with the quote boxes and in the chapter introductions, as well as knocking out things like the Dark Matter Character sheet and the Updated Map. By the end of November, I'd like most of the writing to be complete or in rough-draft form, as well as having many of the high-res background assets finished in anticipation for the print run. 

Throughout November, I also expect we'll finish up the remainder of the art needed for the book itself, which means we'll be able to move our artists onto solely focusing on the full-page art pieces that were included at the 40K stretch goal.  

Page Breakdown 

Since last month, we've been slipping pages in the book here and there. Here's a current breakdown of book length by chapter: 

• The 'Verse: 30 
• Races: 12 
• Gadgeteer: 12 
• Character Options: 52 
• Equipment: 26 
• Ships: 38 
• Monsters: 58? (NPCs aren't in the book quite yet) 
• Spells: 14 
• Appendices: 14 

This sets our current book length at 256, up from 238 last month. This isn't counting the chapter introductions, of course, but I think we're closing in on a final number. 

That's all I've got for now! If you have any questions, let me know here, email me at [email protected], or join our public discord and ask around there (everyone's very friendly and helpful, I promise.)  

October Update
over 5 years ago – Tue, Oct 02, 2018 at 01:45:15 AM

Time for an update! I'm going to try to do one of these every month to keep you all posted with exactly where the project is.

We're cruising our way to a fully-compiled book for the first beta. Many of the chapters are completely done, two are under construction as we finish their remaining sections, and a couple others are awaiting a reformatting pass to get them in beta-ready shape. 

Monsters

September's sprint was focused on finishing swaths of the book and getting it in PDF form. During September, we churned out the core of the Monsters chapter: 50 pages in all with 60 monster statblocks. Most of this was already written, so this task meant finalizing statblocks, editing things for length, and fitting things into statblock formatting. There's some holes in there we need to fill and (in a perfect world) we'd fit in a few more monsters (after all, there's no obligatory xenomorph-like monster yet), but this is looking like a great start. The monster chapter still needs more NPCs for its latter half (we've only got 9 and I'd like to double that), but it's on track. 

Here's a sample page:

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The 'Verse

In the meantime, we made more progress on the on the introduction chapter, The 'Verse. We've got a total rough draft complete and we're making a beeline for the PDF next. Here's a chapter outline: 

• The Galaxy: A section which talks about the scale of the universe, The Black, Dead Magic Zones, the Sepulcher Star, The Maws, The Void, and more. 
• Technology: Covers how magical technology works, talks in-depth about Dark Matter engines, blasters, and ships. 
• Adventuring in the 'Verse: Explores a few ways adventurers ply their trade, from exploration, to scavenging, to mercenary work. 
• Races in the 'Verse: Covers the big galactic alliances and explores the histories of all the major races. We look in depth both at our own new races and old classic RPG races which have become prominent in space. 
• Factions: This section covers each of the big factions which are not affiliated with a particular race: everyone from Grax's Guys for Cheap to the Cabal. These are the sorts of factions which are more likely to come up in campaigns as allies or enemies, so it's a great read! 

My guess is that this chapter is going to run something like 24 pages, but it might be longer when we fit in all the art. 

Also this month we expanded the Ships chapter and the Equipment chapter with some quality of life content: we added starting equipment rules, equipment packs, and more nonmagical gear and magic items to the Equipment chapter (as well as fitting in the d100 trinkets table) and we added more Miscellaneous ships to the Ships chapter. 

What's Next

Here's my to-do list for the next sprint: 

• Finish the PDF of The 'Verse chapter 
• Reformat the Spells chapter due to renames, revisions, and spell additions. (Reformatting doesn't take long, but it's a process of moving around content that has to happen any time there's a major addition.)
• Write NPC stats for (almost) every faction and start chucking them into the book 

Page Breakdown

And here's a current breakdown of book length by chapter: 

• The 'Verse: 24?
• Races: 12 
• Gadgeteer: 10 
• Character Options: 48 
• Equipment: 22 
• Ships: 36 
• Monsters: 58? 
• Spells: 14 
• Appendices: 14 

For a current length of like 238 pages, not including the chapter introductions, copyright and table of content, or the like. It looks like the book is leaning into 250 pages!

 That's all I've got for now! If you have any questions, let me know here, email me at [email protected], or join our public discord and ask around there (everyone's very friendly and helpful, I promise.)