Stretch Goal Reached: Concept Art Section
over 5 years ago – Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 07:57:26 PM

Less than twenty four hours left! Amazingly, we've knocked out yet another stretch goal: a Concept Art Section that will be included among the appendices. This will give readers a chance to glimpse some of the directions we might have taken when crafting some of our most interesting-looking races and monsters, as well as providing DMs and players with alternate designs they can employ for their own games. 

Here's a glimpse at some of the designs our artist Martin Kirby originally pitched for the vect: 

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I think you guys will really enjoy this section! 

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Now it's time to look at some Backer Achievements! 

YouTube: 7738 views. Not a ton of movement on YouTube, but we've also not released any videos recently. A lot of our focus for the last two weeks has been streaming and demoing the book everywhere we could. (For the record, I checked if all the accumulated stream views would bump us up to the achievement, and they fell a few hundred views short. So close on this one!)

Facebook: 211 likes and shares. Not much happening on this front. In the coming months, we're going to rethink how we approach Facebook to make it more engaging for you; this has been really informative.

Twitter: 1656 retweets. This gets us the second point for retweets! Thank you all for spreading the word on Twitter. Because of your help, we've really spread the word about this book far and wide across the Twitterverse. (Note to self: Twitterverse is a great name for a demiplane.)

Tumblr: 1032 notes. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll reach the third goal here, either. That being said, your support on Tumblr has been fantastic!

This puts us at four points, which means we unlock a new mini-stretch goal!

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2 points - Hoverboard Magic Item [done!]

4 points - Earth-Shattering Kaboom Spell [done!]

6 points - Coffee Cantrip

8 points - Double Laser Sword Magic Item

10 points - Grax's Guys for Cheap Stickers for all physical backers

12 points - Dark Matter Galaxy Poster for the 'Goodies' tier and above

Stretch Goal Reached: Dark Matter Character Sheet
over 5 years ago – Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 12:37:11 AM

Just three days left to go in the Kickstarter! We're swiftly approaching the last chance to get in on the campaign, so if you know anyone on the fence, encourage them to get a copy of Dark Matter soon, so we can hit our stretch goals! 

We just unlocked a new stretch goal: a Dark Matter character sheet! As any of the brave Dark Matter playtesters will tell you, having a sheet that helps to track the three new skills will be no small blessing. This will be printed at the end of the book with the appendices and will also come as a standalone PDF with all digital copies of the book. No promises, but I'd like this character sheet to be form-fillable as well, assuming we can figure out how to make that work. 

Like every stretch goal we put forth, we're 90% done with the character sheet. Allow me to talk about my favorite feature of it:

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The ability scores are arranged in the center of the sheet, so you can graph them out on a hexagonal 'radar dish' kind of thing, inspired by old JRPGs which did this very thing. Alternatively, I can clear out the central lines and provide a version that has a perfect central location for a character portrait.

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Alright, with that covered, let's take a look at the Backer Achievements: 

YouTube: 7485 views

Facebook: 196 likes and shares

Twitter: 1289 retweets

Tumblr: 988 notes

We're still at three points. If we hit one more backer achievement before the campaign ends, we'll unlock a new spell!

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2 points - Hoverboard Magic Item [done!]

4 points - Earth-Shattering Kaboom Spell

6 points - Coffee Cantrip

8 points - Double Laser Sword Magic Item

10 points - Grax's Guys for Cheap Stickers for all physical backers

12 points - Dark Matter Galaxy Poster for the 'Goodies' tier and above

BackerKit
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 11:24:41 PM

When we set out to do this Kickstarter, we originally planned to make it as no-frills as possible, knowing full well that, as our first Kickstarter outing, we didn't want to make any additional problems for ourselves. However, there's one specific element that numerous people have urged me to implement: BackerKit, which should streamline the process of us putting Dark Matter into your hands as smoothly as possible.

Here's the rundown of how this works: About two weeks after the campaign ends (this time is for Kickstarter to finalize charges and so forth), we'll have to find out where we need to ship your stuff. We’ll send out a BackerKit survey to collect this information.

We’ll give you a heads-up before we send the survey so that you can watch for it. You don’t need to create a BackerKit account to answer your survey. The invitation email contains a link to your personal survey. It is important to submit your responses as quickly as you can since we need this information to process your rewards.

If you need to change your survey responses, purchase additional books, or update your shipping information, you can click the link in your survey email again or request your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page. (This page will only start working after we send the surveys out.)

If you prefer, you can contact us directly and give us your information, but answering your survey help us get your rewards out to you faster. BackerKit helps us save lots of time by streamlining the survey process, automating data organization, and providing us with pledge management software to make it easy to process your pledge reward shipments

If you used your Facebook credentials to log in to your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey link is sent to the email address you use for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you prefer to use, please contact me.

That's all for now! If you've got any questions about BackerKit, I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

Even More Dark Matter Streams
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 12:31:51 AM

Quick update to point out even more places you can watch Dark Matter being played:

Fumbles and Fame

We're super excited that Fumbles and Fame is going to play some Dark Matter! It's happening soon, on:

Wednesday 22nd, at 2:00 PM EST

We love this streaming community and we're even providing some downloads of the Character Options chapter of the book as a giveaway for their viewers. So if you're interested in getting an early look at that chapter of the final book, go check them out!

Encounter Roleplay

Encounter Roleplay will be concluding their two-shot of Dark Matter on

Thursday 23rd, at 7:30 PM EST

The cast features Will Jones (@EncounterWill), Charlie (@FrostFrmFire), Nicklas (@nyvinter), and Pruitt from WebDM (@JPruInc), all of which are hilarious and thoroughly entertaining, so be sure to catch this!

Adventures Aboard the Zooilogical

And lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the original world-builder for Dark Matter, myself, and two of our friends, got together and shot a short one-off session in Dark Matter. Was it our first time recording something like this? Yup. Did it use a bunch of different microphones of varying quality? Yup. Did we make copious references to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? You bet. 

Enjoy this session aboard the starship Zooilogical, as the intrepid crew of Grax's Guys try to save the innocent zoo visitors from a rampaging spaceshark!

Listen here!

Stretch Goal Reached: Gadgeteer
over 5 years ago – Sun, Aug 19, 2018 at 12:48:18 AM

With only a week left in the campaign, it feels like we're rounding the corner and bolting for the finishing line. And, just in time, we hit $30,000 and unlocked the Gadgeteer class!

Before I tell you everything that makes this class neat, I need to say: thank you. This project wouldn't be possible without your support, and I'm genuinely humbled by the generosity and words of encouragement I've seen over the last few weeks. This project is going to be killer when it's finished, and you've made that possible.

Now, the Gadgeteer. This is a 10-page addition to the book, which introduces a levels 1-20 base class that is solely focused on gadgets, blasters, drones, and AI. It comes with two archetypes and a full host of gadgets which make up the meat of the class. Here's two pages from the chapter:

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One interesting thing to note is the Prototype feature, which gives you a potent gadget which defines the way your gadgeteer plays (which is entirely separate from your Tech Specialty, which is the class's archetype). The two included Prototypes are the Utility Matrix, which provides a host of at-will gadgets (with a short recharge), including a cloaking device, a grappling hook, and a smoke bomb, and the Experimental Frame, which is a literal mech suit with a regenerating pool of temporary hit points equal to your level.

In all, this is one of the more fun and customizable classes we've ever written and it perfectly complements the setting and mechanics of Dark Matter. I can't wait for you all to play it!

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Alright, it's time to look in on the Backer Achievements:

YouTube: 7190 views. We're closing in on this achievement, but it'll be close!

Facebook: 189 likes and shares. Now we're counting both likes and shares, so be sure to do both!

Twitter: 1153 retweets. We're closing in on the second backer achievement for Twitter! Follow us to keep on top of everything we're doing as it happens!

Tumblr: 942 notes. Keep liking and reblogging!

That means we're still at 3 points, so we're only 1 achievement away from unlocking another addition to the book!

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2 points - Hoverboard Magic Item [done!]  

4 points - Earth-Shattering Kaboom Spell  

6 points - Coffee Cantrip  

8 points - Double Laser Sword Magic Item  

10 points - Grax's Guys for Cheap Stickers for all physical backers  

12 points - Dark Matter Galaxy Poster for the 'Goodies' tier and above