Lone Shark Games

[lonesharkgames]

Lone Shark Games’ Statement About Kickstarter

Hi there. We’re Lone Shark Games. You may know us from the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game and our work on Betrayal at House on the Hill, or our self-published creations The Maze of Games, the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game, Puzzlecraft, The Ninth World, and Thornwatch. Those last five creations were funded on Kickstarter, to the tune of $1.37 million. Also, our sister political company, Basket of Adorables, did a campaign for the book Game Theory in the Age of Chaos. Kickstarter dubbed each of those projects a Project We Love, and we’re deeply grateful. To say that Kickstarter has been essential to our team undersells it. We would not be a publisher at all without them.

With our last campaign entering fulfillment, we’re ready to launch our next campaign tomorrow at 11 AM Pacific/2 PM Eastern, for a game people have asked us to publish since we dreamed it up in 2013: Paul & Storm’s Sausage Party. It’s a light and silly game that our fans have loved at conventions and JoCo Cruises. For boring reasons involving trademarks and printing schedules, we can’t delay our launch. So, even though we’re making a silly game, we have to make a serious statement about it.

In the last few weeks, Kickstarter has engaged in activities that we can charitably characterize as “not union-friendly.” We won’t go deep into detail about those activities, because it’s difficult to do so without getting really angry. We’ve been asked to sign several letters of condemnation for these activities, but they didn’t sound like us. We needed to express our feelings both behind the scenes, which we did, and in public in our own voice, which we will now do.

We have many friends at Kickstarter, at all levels of the company. Some are managers, some are rank-and-file employees, all are awesome. We want them to prosper, and, if they want to make a pro-union declaration like they made today, to have the right to unionize. We have talked to several Kickstarter employees, and they do not want a boycott. Boycotts can lead to layoffs and firings and other catastrophes. So, we’re not boycotting Kickstarter. We’re not pulling our campaign off the platform, because the employees at Kickstarter have been great to us, and they don’t want us to leave.

However, we are doing something else. We’ve come to our conclusions, but we don’t think YOU have to agree with those conclusions to get our game. You should make your own decisions about whether to give Kickstarter money when you give us a pledge. So, we’re guaranteeing everyone the ability to pledge for a copy of Sausage Party and all its rewards on our upcoming pledge manager, for the same price as on Kickstarter. There will be no differences in offerings or exclusives between the two sites; you can get the same things for the same amount even if you don’t use Kickstarter. If you want an announcement of when we push that live, jump on our mailing list.

We would never do this if Kickstarter was behaving in a manner we condoned. But we feel we’ve been left no choice at all. We have values, and until this month, we were 100% certain Kickstarter shared them. We still think we agree on most things, but this has shaken us. We don’t like being shaken.

So, finally, about that letter to Kickstarter. We said that the ones we’d seen didn’t quite reflect our tone on the subject. This next paragraph does.

Kickstarter, if you’re listening, we need you to stop setting yourself on fucking fire. You are a crucial part of the game industry. You are nearly single-handedly responsible for the recent bloom in tabletop creativity. We have grown up with you. We need you. But we also need you not to betray the community’s ideals. So, kindly fix yourself right now. Call your employees together, say you fucked up royally, and put yourself back on the healing path. Otherwise, when we run our next campaigns for games we think your audience will want—including our first release for Lords of Vegas in half a decade and our first traitor game since Betrayal at House on the Hill—we might have to split between platforms again. Maybe we will just split entirely. So, figure it out. Please.

Thanks to everyone for reading this. We hope you enjoy Paul & Storm’s Sausage Party, wherever you back it. And we hope never to have to write another letter like this again.

The team at Lone Shark Games

P.S. Here’s the game. We’ll update it with a link to the campaign tomorrow.

[lonesharkgames]

The Theseus Guide to the Final Maze Is Ready for You

Right now, you can buy The Theseus Guide to the Final Maze, our new chapbook for our interactive puzzle novel The Maze of Games. Yes, right now. We only made a small print run, so if you want it, hop to it.

The new chapter takes place inside the final chapter of the original book. The characters Colleen and Sam are getting ready to deal with the Gatekeeper’s final challenge. There’s no guarantee they’ll make it back to Upper Wolverhampton alive unless you get them out.

So why did we make a book-inside-a-book? First, we love The Maze of Games world, and going back to write text and puzzles for it was a blast. Second, there’s the small matter that no one has solved The Maze of Games’s final maze. Or if they have, they haven’t told us. And we want people to solve it. So we made a hint book that we think you’ll love reading and solving. The whole team is back: author Mike Selinker, developer Gaby Weidling, artist Pete Venters, editor Tanis O'Connor, and graphic designer Elisa Teague. Check out that hot new cover by Pete and Elisa! The book is $14.95. If you're going to Emerald City Comicon this weekend, you can buy it in person at the Lone Shark booth (#204). Otherwise, you can have it sent to you from our Penny Arcade store site. If you act now, you can get both The Maze of Games hardback and the Theseus Guide for $59.95.

If you purchased the $15 tier of last summer’s Humble Puzzle Bundle, your download page automatically will update to include the PDF of the book. Otherwise, if you want a PDF, simply purchase the physical book from our Penny Arcade store and you’ll get instructions on how to get a PDF.

We hope you enjoy the Theseus Guide!

The Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

Welcome to our World

I'm happy to report that the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game base set is all finished on our end and is at the printer. Last night I checked the final proofs for every card and all the books in the game, just to make sure nothing needed to change. We’re now in the process of working with our printer to get the game toward completion. We do not yet have a return date from the printer, but will let you know when we do. This game has taken us a long time to get right, but it's very good—probably the best set of anything we've ever made—and we think you'll like it when it comes in.

So, here’s something you’d probably like to know.

Here's what the base set will be called

For a long time, we referred to the base set as The Revelation Box and the expansion as The Chapter Box. When we decided to break the expansion into two boxes of four chapters each, we started calling those Alpha and Omega, two terms of great import in the Book of Revelation. Those didn't stick, because there are a lot of apocalypses woven into our game, so we wanted to pay homage to that without making it completely front and center. Now this trilogy is informally referred to as "the Revelation block," in the manner of calling groups of three related Magic sets a "block."

The new name of the base Apocrypha Adventure Card Game set is The World. (Or, as we sometimes call it, "the World Box.") The World contains all the cards, dividers, pawns, bases, and books from the base set subtitled The Secrets of Candlepoint, plus The Book of the Skinwalkers chapter. Those sets are co-written with our friends Patrick Rothfuss and Matt Forbeck, two great weavers of fragmented memories. In The World, you will see the dawn of the apocalypse which you may or may not be able to stop.

Here's what the game will look like (at 40% of its size):

Here's what the expansions will be called

Box Two contains about 400 cards in four chapters (Deathless, Fae, Golems, and Physicians) and is called The Flesh. There are tons of ... well, let's call it "physical" references throughout this set. In The Flesh, people go through the wild primes of their lives, dream out loud, get sick, die ... and don't stop there. Things will get out of control fast, and you'll have to put all your effort into riding the tide.

Box Two contains fragments by Bruce R. Cordell, Jerry Holkins, Kris Straub, and Teeuwynn Woodruff. For folks who are wondering, Mary Robinette Kowal had to drop off the project, but we think you'll like Tey's creepy stories just fine. After all, she wrote the first flavortext for the game back when it was still called "Saints."

Box Three contains 400 more cards in four more chapters (Animus, Damned, Dreamers, and Serpents) and is called The Devil. You will see all sorts of higher-level manifestations in this one. When you put Mayan dragons, time-bending sorcerers, ravenous demons, and one ticked off Mother Nature in one place, things will get serious fast. In The Devil, you won't question the seriousness of your task, only whether or not you're up to it.

Box Three contains fragments by Keith Baker, Wolfgang Baur, Erin M. Evans, and Kij Johnson. It and Box Two will ship to backers after the base set goes out to everyone. The two expansions will be staggered at retail, though they will be sent to backers at the same time.

The World. The Flesh. And The Devil. Three big boxes with three big purposes. That should keep you busy for quite some time. At least until the world ends.

Mike and the Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

pre-holiday updates on Apocrypha, The Ninth World, and The Theseus Guide

2016 is coming to a close, and we’re looking back on a year that was a bit different than we expected. We made an expansion for Betrayal at House on the Hill, produced a brand new base set and a bunch of class decks for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and ran an awesome Humble Puzzle Bundle. Plus we unveiled what we expect to do with Thornwatch and the Eyrewood Adventures line. It was a very busy year for the Sharks.

A few big things are heading out to production very soon. Here are the details on three of our coolest projects.

The Apocrypha Base Set finishes up in layout

Apocrypha’s base set is about to go to the printer. Here’s where it is.

All 584 base set cards and 10 promo cards are completely edited, laid out, and proofed, with two exceptions: Missions and structures will get locked this week.

The 40-page main rulebook has its basic layout finished. The text is being flowed around the art and diagrams, and then it'll be proofed and finalized.

The 16-page storybook will be laid out next week when the rulebook is finished.

Pawns for the 10 characters in the base set are laid out. The 30 dividers are in layout as well.

The box has a front cover design done. (The back of the box is the last thing we do, because it shows cards and such in their final forms.) We'll share the cover and the box names with you next time around.

Here’s some of the new card frames. In order, here’s a gift, a threat, a true threat, omens, a nexus, a saint, a fragment, and a death.

The Ninth World has all its region art done

Where we are with the various elements of The Ninth World:

This week we're getting in the last of our region pieces, a rather horrendous place called Crowd City. We've also selected all our locations that have been previously illustrated in Monte Cook Games' astounding art library. That will mean that we've finished all the art for the characters and the regions, and are now getting a few remaining pieces for the town and wilderness deck.

MCG's art director Bear Weiter also dug out all the maps for every region in the world of Numenera. We are carving them up for the "round 1" cards in each of the regions. This will also form the basis of our playmap.

Next month MCG's equally astounding Shanna Germain will join us to polish off the flavortext for the game.

Sometime next month, we'll begin the process of melding the completed art, rules, card text, story, and graphic design into one unit. That is a complex process, and we don't know quite how long it will take. Everything we've gotten in has been gorgeous, and we want the final product to be equally gorgeous. So expect updates in the new year to see how that's going.

Here’s some cool new art from Luke Green and Bruce Brenneise.

The Theseus Guide to the Final Maze is off to layout

We've just about finished the writing, puzzle design, development, and editing on the new Theseus Guide to the Final Maze, our upcoming hint book for The Maze of Games's stubbornly unsolved final puzzles. I had a great time writing in the world of Sam and Colleen again, and Gaby and I enjoyed coming up with ways to clue the final answers without being too sledgehammery.

Now that Tanis is finishing up with editing, Elisa can get started on the layout. She's got some interesting ideas which will fit in nicely with the original book. And Pete's doing a brand new cover image, which makes us quite happy. We're confident that the result will be a little book we're proud to put right beside The Maze of Games.

Which is what we're going to do! We originally expected to make just a PDF tied in with the Humble Puzzle Bundle, but we like the end result so much that we've decided to do a limited run of 1,000 printed copies. It will be a half-size book with a cover and 16 pages of interiors. Plus everyone who orders one will get a free PDF. When they're ready, we'll let you know and you can order one if you like.

We're probably not getting this out in December, but we feel real good about January. So here's the deal: If you want to solve the final puzzle in The Maze of Games before anyone gets the hint book, we suggest reserving a little holiday time. Get some eggnog, put on Mel Torme, and get solving by menorahlight pronto. Because in the new year, a little book with some big hints will be coming out.

Happy holidays from your favorite Sharks!

[lonesharkgames]

An epic-length post on Apocrypha printing, distribution, and strategy

Now that we can see the end of our build on the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game coming, I'm going to take a moment to give you an update on where we are and how we made our decisions to get there. Apocrypha is the largest project Lone Shark has ever taken on, and we made four sets of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, so we know large. I liken Apocrypha to producing an entire new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, except without knowing in advance what the core rules of D&D are.

So here's some news: The Apocrypha base set will be going to the printer in December. We don't know when it will come back from the printer, and we promise we will tell our backers when we know. But here's even more news: When it comes back, we're going to send it to our backers.

That means that we're dividing the base set from the expansions. Yes, I said expansions, plural. I'll go into details below about why there are now three boxes, but here's the plan for those: Box 1 is the base set and Skinwalkers, box 2 is the next four expansions (currently Deathless, Fae, Dreamers, and Physicians), and box 3 is the last four expansions (currently Golems, Animus, Serpents, and Damned). These last two boxes don't have names yet, but they're currently codenamed "Alpha" and "Omega."

We're going to print expansion 1 (Alpha) and expansion 2 (Omega) at the same time, and send them both to our backers at the same time, but they will not hit retail at the same time. There's a lot of thought behind that decision, and why we're making other Lone Shark games at the same time as we're making this one. If you'll bear with me, I'll explain the three reasons all of this is happening like it is.

Reason 1: Distribution wants multiple games from us

Here's some truths about the game business of retail and distribution. Retailers need distributors so that they can get multiple titles and save on shipping. Distributors like publishers that have multiple titles so they can also get free shipping and are also supporting a publisher that shows a strong commitment to their titles. With over 5,000 games coming out next year, we can understand their trepidation. While our reputation has gotten us further than most first-time game publishers, the process has been slow.

But the current distribution system for tabletop has taught us one thing: Even if they want to, retailers and distributors are not set up to support companies with just one game very well, if at all. Publishers succeed in the retail channel because of a robust product line that drags all their products upward. This message was hammered on us over and over.

So we began a strategy to make a very specific type of game: immersive, world-spanning, interactive. The three prongs of that strategy were Apocrypha, The Ninth World, and the three-game line Eyrewood Adventures, the first of which is Thornwatch. That required an immense amount of capital and a whole lot of simultaneous work. Our game designers have been on salary working on these games for more than a year. We've bought at least $150,000 worth of art alone. We will have very big printing and shipping bills. It's a lot of stuff at the same time.

But the good news is that all that work is now paying off, and all that capital and time is being spent on producing the games. The Apocrypha base set and Ninth World are reasonably close to their print dates, the chapter boxes from Apocrypha will follow, and then Thornwatch after that. We think we'll have a powerful product line at retail, including what you have been seeing in Apocrypha.

Reason 2: Distribution wants multiple products in each line

We originally started with the idea that all of Apocrypha would be available in one big drop: a giant base box and a giant expansion box. Apocrypha is like three sets of Pathfinder in its story content, and we wanted to deliver that to the channel all at once. 

Over and over, we heard that while distribution would tolerate that approach, they didn't love it. A vastly better strategy, said the distributors, would be to do exactly what we always do: dole out the game over time. And eventually, after months of trying to get people to see our side, we had to accept that our original idea did not take into account the experience of the distributors or the individual customer knowledge of the retailers. When we presented the plan—base set first, then Alpha, then Omega—they loved it. This meant that they'd get a full-size base game and two smaller (and thus cheaper) expansions. That got all the buy-in we needed.

It's highly probable that Ninth World will come out at retail in the middle of that set of Apocrypha products. This was also popular with distributors. But we don't imagine waiting all that time will be popular with our Apocrypha backers. So that's why we're going to send our backers the base set and the first promos as soon as we have them, and then print all of the expansions and the bonus mission pack at once and ship them to our backers together. Our backers will have Omega long before anyone else does, we expect.

This is a massive hit for us in the production and shipping costs, because obviously we're not charging you more to extend our product line. We'll suck up those costs, because we hope people are really going to like the game and we'll make those expenses up later. 

Reason 3: This game takes a lot of time to test and lay out

With 20 characters and 99 missions and many hundreds of gifts and threats and omens and everything else, all of those things need to be balanced against each other. This game has more than 100 pages of rulebooks and storybooks. And while we're done with all the art and most of the rules text, not all of it is tested, flavortexted, or laid out. We are cranking on that as fast as possible, but it's a major job for half a dozen full-time employees. 

We take playtesting very seriously at Lone Shark. Our games are colossal and have tens of thousands of moving parts. So we have to check and track all of them. It's a lot of work. But it's good work, and it's going well.

Our current estimate is that we'll be done with playtesting most of Alpha and Omega in late January and they will be finished in layout by late February. That's an estimate. We've given those before, and we've been wrong. But we can see the game taking its final shape, so we think we're closer to right this time. (Also, if you're in the Seattle area and you want to help us with that, you can join our Remoras playtest groups. If so, email us at info @ the name of our company dot com.)

Finally, all of this activity means we are shutting off the Apocrypha PledgeManager on November 30. If you have any last-minute Apocrypha items you want to preorder from us, or you have a friend that wants in at these prices, get over there soon. (FYI: The expansion box is still listed as one item. It causes too much disruption in PledgeManager to change that, but just know that the expansion will really be two boxes.)

We hope you are as excited about this as we are. We're working very hard to make this game the best it can be and get it to you as quickly as possible. We are way beyond the budget and timeline we set out early on, but we are committed and think this first self-published title will be worth it. We also believe we have come up with a solution that gets our backers a game sooner, the distribution and retail channel what it wants, and a proper amount of playtesting and proofing for these gigantic projects. If you think so too, please let us know.

Thanks for your support on all of our game lines. I think you'll like what's coming.

Mike and the Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

Widow's Walk and Mummy's Mask launch, Thornwatch Down Under, and the Kickstarters of our colleagues

We don't think we've ever had two giant games come out all at the same time. But that's what went down with the Widow's Walk expansion for Betrayal at House on the Hill and the Mummy's Mask set for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. This all came out in ONE WEEK.

That's Widow's Walk, the Mummy's Mask Base Set, the We Be Goblins Too! adventure for the Pathfinder Society, the Summoner Class Deck, and the Mummy's Mask Character Add-On Deck, all of which got to stores and websites last week. We think they're pretty amazing.

Our designer Elisa Teague went on the Geek and Sundry show Game the Game and showed off Widow's Walk. Here, they're playing a brand new promotional haunt called "Walk Among the Stars."

Thornwatch Down Under

If you're going to be at PAX Aus, you'll get the first look at a new Thornwatch adventure, the first part of our Riddle of Seasons. This is the first peek at the adventures in the expansion Dark of the Wood. The Riddle of Seasons is a multi-part adventure that will span all the four main PAXes from late 2016 to summer 2017. It concerns the fate of a grove lion pup, here sketched by Mike Krahulik.

He's kind of adorable. We hope you will rescue him. If you want to be among the first to play his adventure, sign up for the Thornwatch print and play on our Thornwatch page.

The Lone Shark Games Kickstarter Fund

The Lone Shark Games Kickstarter Fund is a fund that we established four and a half years ago to back the crowdfunding projects of our many collaborators. We've backed more than 230 projects so far with more than $6,000 of pledges. That's because our clients, contractors, and staff are among the best at producing amazing things. Here are some projects we're currently backing that you might want to check out.

Illimat, a card game by our Widow's Walk and Apocrypha co-writer Keith Baker and the rock band the Decemberists.

Clades, a card game that teaches evolution from Mike's longtime co-designer Jonathan Tweet.

Bears vs Babies, the followup to Exploding Kittens from our collaborator Elan Lee.

Logical Leaps and Landings: an Adalogical Enigmas Collection, a puzzle book starring Countess Ada Lovelace by puzzle maker Pavel Curtis.

Kickstarted in the—well, we'll just let you check that NSFW game from our Widow's Walk co-author Zoë Quinn yourself.

No Thank You, Evil! The Adventures Continue, the kids' RPG from our Ninth World partners Monte Cook Games.

The King in Yellow Christmas Cards, Lovecraftian greetings from our artist friend Heather Hudson.

Also on Kickstarter's Election Issues page is a children's book by Lone Shark's Mike Selinker and Gaby Weidling commemorating the issues in the United States presidential election. It's a Gorey parody called The Ghastlytrump Tinies, and you can find out how to order it on ghastlytrump.com.

Those are our early November updates. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next month with some more awesome news.

The Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

Three Halloween games, Apocrypha layout, and the last day for Thornwatch

October is traditionally our busiest month, where we give you all sorts of treats for your Halloween pleasure. We have a whole lot of info on a whole lot of games today.

Today is the last day for our Thornwatch Kickstarter. It's now the top campaign for both Lone Shark and Penny Arcade, and we couldn't be happier. If you haven't pledged for Thornwatch, here's what's changed since we launched the campaign live on stage.

All backers of the game can get a free Dark of the Wood expansion by adding on $5 for additional postage. The new expansion contains five new character decks (including the Briarlock), new player mats, new storyboards, and new pawns.

You can now get our acrylic character pawns as add-ons. You can get the 12 pawns for the base set plus Briarlock for $30, and the other 8 Dark of the Wood acrylic pawns for an additional $20. If you want both, add on $50. (If you're getting a wood box, both sets of acrylic pawns and the expansion are already included in that level.)

We've added an 8-page comic book by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins to the game. 

We've unlocked some convention storyboards. We've unlocked two storyboards that will be debuting for PAX Australia, two for PAX South, two for PAX East, and two for PAX West. 

We've unlocked a new mechanical element of the game: scar cards. These cards are like trait cards except they're given out for failing a scene. We’ve also unlocked new terrain cards for the game.

We've unlocked online galleries of lore, art, and knots for the game. Plus we are right on the edge of unlocking a Thornwatch album! 

We still have more momentum goals. They will get us an Eyrewood survival guide and extra enemy pawns (5000 backers). 

We revealed Mike Krahulik's original notebook for Card Warriorz. Good reading if you want to see where this game came from. 

The entire Riddle of Thorns has been revealed. The answers will follow after the campaign ends.

If you'd like to join us in the Eyrewood, you might want to hop over to the Kickstarter page now. We'll wrap up at 5 pm Pacific. Thanks for all your support so far!

We have been powering through production and flavortext creation for the Apocrypha base set. Elisa has been cranking out card layouts, and this approach is where we've ended up.

The game is looking really good and playing really good. We're excited to be in the final stretch on the base set.

Three offerings for your Halloween pleasure

Speaking of spooky things, we have three offerings this month that we think you'll love.

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game's new base set Mummy's Mask is shipping to Paizo subscribers now. This is our coolest, craziest set yet. It takes place in the tombs of an Egyptian-inspired city and ends in a flying pyramid. If you've been saying "It's been a long time since a PACG set came out," you can see why here. We took our time to make a fantastic game. The Base Set and Character Add-On Deck are available now. We also are releasing our 20th (!) class deck for the game, with Gunslinger, Warpriest, and Summoner Class Decks, also available now.

You can see a lot more about Mummy's Mask in the Mummy's Mask preview on the Paizo site.

After 12 years, Betrayal at House on the Hill's first expansion is finally coming out. Widow's Walk is a new expansion jointly released by us and Wizards of the Coast's Avalon Hill team. It's got 50 new haunts, 30 new cards, 20 new rooms (including a new floor!), and fistfuls of new tokens. We brought our whole crew of Betrayal-loving friends, like Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward, Borderlands writer Mikey Neumann, and Doubleclicks singer Angela Webber, among dozens of other surprise guests. It's really nice to go back to the house again.

You can read more about the new Betrayal set on the Widow's Talk blogs on the Avalon Hill Facebook page.

And here's a final horror-themed game of a very different stripe. After a couple years out of print, our insanity-producing word game Unspeakable Words has finally returned with an all new look. The Deluxe edition is illustrated by our friend John Kovalic in a delightful Lovecraftian style, filled with somber and disturbing ... no, just kidding, it's adorable. You can also get the original version illustrated by Tony Steele too.

Both of these are shipping from Playroom to Kickstarter backers and will be available for purchase to the general public Real Soon Now™.

Those are some great games for your Halloween party. Thanks for supporting Lone Shark, and if you want to be in that Thornwatch Kickstarter, jump on it right now!

Mike and the Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

Eyrewood Adventures: How it all fits together

When Penny Arcade asked Lone Shark to do Thornwatch with them, I insisted that we needed to do all of the Eyrewood. There was no point to doing a game about the Thornwatch if we couldn’t also focus on the other parts of the triad, the Lookouts and the Daughters. That meant three games. Mike and Jerry loved that, but I think they only believed it when I answered the question that you folks have asked over and over: How do all the parts of the Eyrewood Adventures line interact?

GIANT SCREAMING CAVEAT TO EVERYTHING I’M ABOUT TO SAY: It’s probably all wrong. What you’ll be looking into is a work in progress. It’s not just built on sand, it’s built on the theory that sand can exist. So if anyone comes back at us with “You said Daughters would work like this and now it works like that!” I guarantee that you will be met with a shrug emoticon.

What I outlined was a game line unified by a common engine. That’s all the things that all of the games needed to function. Then after some soul-searching conversation with the team, I defined all the things that each game needed to function differently. I built it all into a version of this slide, which became the games’ blueprint going forward. I call it the “Voltron slide” because all the independent parts come together to make an exciting whole.*

You can see us discuss an older version of this blueprint in this PAX East video.

Okay, let’s look at everything that’s going on in the Voltron slide.

All roads lead to the Eyrewood

In the grey box, you can see the things that all the games need. Any Eyrewood adventure has modular storyboards and map tiles, cards, dice, and terrain cards (we often call them “rivers”). Combat involves a momentum track and wounds dispensed to the players. A judge has powers and ebb to play with. Explanatory advantage—narrating what your cards say and getting paid for it—and advancement by player rather than character are also core concepts. And crucial to the game: Creativity in cosplay, art, and music are hardwired into the game.

Those are the core systems. Each game then tacks on the subsystems it needs to be unique.

The Thornwatch are superheroes

Thornwatch is a game about being a magical ghostly badass. No Thornwatch looks at a fallen Skeleman and thinks, “I want its helmet.” Mostly they stay the same and wait for something interesting to happen. That’s the arc of superhero games. In the Marvel world, going to the opera is the big thing Reed and Sue Richards have circled on their calendar today. Then Annihilus sucks Manhattan into the Negative Zone and… no opera tonight, Franklin. Boiled down, that’s what Thornwatch is. The Thornwatch really have no plans at all—they cease to exist—except when trouble darkens the door.

As the tan box shows, this is good for introductory adventuring. If you’re new to the co-op adventure game genre I play in most of my days, Betrayal at House on the Hill is my most well-known introductory adventure game. In such a game, characters pop up and expand in play. To make that work, Thornwatch are stateless. A Blade is a Blade. But your Blade is influenced by this game’s explanatory advantage, a system of traits that can turn into hero dice. (We also have another subsystem we might introduce, called scars. More on that later.) You can mix cards if you like, but you don’t earn them. The knots summoning system is the coolest element here: Players of Thornwatch adventures earn knots they can use to alter future games. You’ll see people wearing and manipulating them at conventions down the line.

The Lookouts are kids

This does not mean that Lookouts is written FOR kids. In many ways, I want a kid coming into this world to start projecting themselves onto the Thornwatch first. You understand where you might want to get to, then start the process of getting there.

The blue box shows Lookouts (which of course has not yet been designed, so don’t hold me to anything here) introducing a version of a progression arc that exists in a much less introductory adventure game, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. The Lookouts start out mostly formless, gaining a series of monster-hunter badges that upgrade their card set. (Again, advancement by player, not character. You don’t actually change the deck permanently; you change your ability to build your deck.) Unlike the Thornwatch, the Lookouts can die, and by dying the player can lose progress. Equipment and villages show up as subsystems as well. You are a small part of a living world here; let’s see how you grow.

The Daughters are gods

Daughters is something else entirely. When you hear Jerry talk about Daughters, he goes to a whole other planet. In his mind, the druidic Daughters are the Eyrewood’s apex predators. They own space in an ever-changing world, and in their space, things are going to go the way they want if they have anything to say about it. This is a prototypical god game: you create a realm, you dedicate upkeep, and you hope you didn’t set everything on the path to catastrophe. (Spoiler alert! Sometimes catastrophe shows up anyway.)

In the green box, Daughters starts to take that form. (And Daughters is even less designed than Lookouts, so step gingerly.) The game involves castlebuilding—each Daughter has a glade they want to nurture. There are other, nonhuman characters for the first time: animals, spirits, followers. We use the placeholder word “stickers” (protip: not actually stickers) to define a Legacy-style use of terrain cards and elements to influence gameplay. “Inheritance” is a concept we haven’t fleshed out much, but it’s basically about passing on the mantle of the forest to younger Daughters. That’s where we are with that.

A Thornwatch, a Lookout, and a Daughter walk into a grove…

Here’s the killer app: All of these games can be played at once. A Thornwatch, a Lookout, and a Daughter can all play in the same adventure. They all interact with the same core system: a Lookout slots onto the momentum track the same way a Daughter does. But they are rewarded and penalized differently. Success means to a member of the Thornwatch “Here is this knot for saving the village,” but Daughters don’t care about knots. Instead, the Daughter hears that as “Here is an upgrade for your glade” and the Lookout hears that as “Here is a badge for slaying a Glider Alpha.” And then they go off and do different things with those consequences.

The characters all play the same game in the way their own game demands. That is a thing no one has ever done before. And thanks to you, we’re doing it.

Mike Selinker

[lonesharkgames]

Why I wanted to make Thornwatch

Hey folks, thanks overmuch to all of you who are supporting Thornwatch, our first foray into the Eyrewood Adventures line. Now that the Kickstarter is live, I wanted to take a glimmer of your precious time to tell you about the game we're working on, and why I wanted to make it.—Mike

I'm not the best game designer in the tabletop game industry. I'm not the best writer in the industry either. I'm not the best puzzle designer. And I've proven over and over that I'm not the best company president. I'm good at all those things, but I'm not the best. However, I might be the best collaborator. Everything I do, I do for one express purpose: to bring together the most enjoyable people under the same roof and help them create the most magical things.

You can see it in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, where I assembled the best co-op game developers to make a breakout game. For the Conundrucopia section of The Maze of Games, I got the world's best puzzlemakers to craft puzzles set in the 1890s. In the upcoming Apocrypha Adventure Card Game, you'll see the best game-loving fiction writers writing our fragmentary memories—people like Pat Rothfuss, Erin Evans, Kris Straub, and Kij Johnson. For Widow's Walk, our first expansion of Betrayal at House on the Hill in 12 years, I threw together the most eclectic collection of haunt writers, creative geniuses like Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward, Borderlands writer Mikey Neumann, Angela Webber of the Doubleclicks, media critic Anita Sarkeesian, and Cards Against Humanity humorists Max Temkin and Eli Halpern. I want all these people working with me on the craziest, coolest stuff.

Which leads me to Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins. 

Jerry is a contributor to both Apocrypha and Widow's Walk, naturally. That's because his mind is a bonkers madhouse of lore and flavor. Everything grows out of control in that brain, like a narrative kudzu. For Jerry, there is no separation between the world in his head and the world his head is in. And when he first described the Eyrewood to me, I knew I wanted to live there. For a time anyway. A time before the ebb ensorcelled all. A time when Lookouts still believed they could stem the monstrous tide. A time when the Daughters surrounded themselves with fearsome beasts and ravenous briars. A time when, if a child tied a bramble knot in a birch tree, the Thornwatch would come. 

Now, admit it, that's not the story you expected me to tell. You expected me to wax rapturous about the creation of Mike Krahulik, he of the mechanical invention of the core of this game. I'm a rules guy, and I can spot a good rules system when I see it. That's what I saw in Mike's design. Also, all the lush greens and malevolent purples of a corrupted, fantastical biosphere. Truly, a trove of amazement issued forth from Mike's light pen on an hourly basis. I will wax rapturous later on the elegance of the wound deck and the sublimeness of the skill card system and the gleam in the dead eyes of the Skelemans. Later. For now, I want to talk about what I heard from Jerry's mouth.

When Jerry speaks of knots, he can't see them tied. He imagines reasons for people to tie them. When Jerry speaks of camping spikes that hold plots of the Eyrewood in place while the rest gyres around them, he can't see them staked into the earth. He imagines opportunities for stories of the roiling wood. When Jerry bedecks Lookouts in badges named for dark-hearted monsters, he can't see them arrayed on an accoladed child's sash. He sees tableaus of monsters burning and petrifying the ones who didn't get their badges.

You ask Jerry for a hydra, he gives you a giant four-headed snapping turtle that sings travelers to death. He names it the Swamp Choir. And then he asks if you think it's good.

It's good, Jerry. It's so good, people sing it back to you.

So it's my job to build a design collaboration around that insanity. He's already got Krahulik, and their buddies Kiko and Feh and the rest. So I bring in my crew: Lords of Waterdeep co-creator Rodney Thompson to build it all up, and Pathfinder Adventure Card Game lead developer Chad Brown to lock it all down. The rest of my devs start pruning and tying knots along the edges. Me? I'm the shepherd, the one who tends the field and keeps the foxes at bay. I make sure we're thinking large, uniting all the facets of Thornwatch and Lookouts and Daughters into a creative whole. I say "I desperately need to know what this element is" and then I watch this masterwork assemblage forge it from the aether. And then I bring it to you.

You have an opportunity to join us for this journey into the Eyrewood. I hope you come along. Jerry's guiding us along the trail, and quite honestly, I'm pretty sure he's carving that trail through the forest with his mind. Slash the strings on your scabbards, for there are monsters ahead.

[lonesharkgames]

The long-awaited launch of Thornwatch

We made a surprise announcement on the mainstage at PAX West: We launched the Thornwatch Kickstarter! This is the third part of Lone Shark's plan to publish our own games, starting with the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game (currently in layout and production) and The Ninth World: A Skillbuilding Game for Numenera (design done, working on art and development). On Thornwatch, we seem to have started off great. Here are some details.

Thornwatch is the first game in the Eyrewood Adventures line that we're making with our upstairs neighbor, Penny Arcade. Our design team, including the triumvirate of Mike Selinker, Chad Brown, and Lords of Waterdeep co-designer Rodney Thompson, joined with PA's Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins to design this epic graphic novel adventure. You will feel like you are right in the middle of a comic book in this game. We released a print and play, which you can find on our new website. In it, one player is the Judge, who marshals the elements of the forest to achieve objectives and gain tokens of magical corruption called the Ebb. Each other player is a member of the Thornwatch, a magical band of forest guardians. A villager can summon them to an adventure by tying a bramble knot in a tree.

Each character, denizen, and enemy has a momentum card, which you can see above. Those are used on the momentum track, a unique system for tracking initiative, damage, and progress. Each character also has a deck of cards. Below you can see our playtest version of a character's hand, which has action cards unique to each character (here, the Sage's Fireball and Bridge of Ages), skill cards (Mind and Spirit) which power them, and a wound card, which clogs up your deck. 

You can also see the character's trait cards (Here, Angry's front and back), which encourage acting in character to gain bonus hero dice, which are among the custom 10-sided dice in the game. The game also comes with terrain cards (here, Gored Villager) for the Judge, who arrays them on some modular map tiles. Below, you can see some of the swamp tiles, which combine to make a gorgeous picture, here shown in sketch form.

These maps are assembled by the Judge using several storyboards. Each storyboard gives you the rules and story for a scene in the magical Eyrewood. Here's a storyboard front by Mike K.

When you finish a particular storyboard, the Judge and players decide which direction to head: perhaps to the conclusion tile or a dead end, or maybe one of several branches.

At the end of a successful adventure, the players—not the characters—are awarded the knowledge of a particular knot (here, the Knot of Wings), which each player can tie on their person to gain bonuses in play. That's right, you can wear your game. At PAX West, players who joined the Thornwatch could tie a knot in our birch trees (left) and gain the Knot of Wings (right). This knot let players who achieved it to start with a hero die already available on subsequent plays. 

There's a lot more to Thornwatch, and you can learn about it on the campaign page. We hope you like it! Mike and the Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

Gen Con is Shark Country

If you're at Gen Con in Indianapolis, you might want to come see us at all of our many locations. You can meet the whole Lone Shark Games crew: Aviva Schecterson, Chad Brown, Elisa, Teague, Gaby Weidling, Keith Richmond, Liz Spain, Mike Selinker, Marie Poole, Paul Peterson, Shane Steed, and Tanis O’Connor, plus our friends Mike Krahulik and Mike Fehlauer from Penny Arcade! Here's what you will see.

Lone Shark Games Booth 2847

If you're coming to Gen Con, you can get your Maze of Games signed by most of the team, or pick up a new copy, at the Lone Shark Games headquarters at booth 2847. You can also see our upcoming games the Apocrypha Adventure Card Game, Thornwatch, The Ninth World, and Sausage Party. You can get our book The Maze of Games and also Elisa Teague's Girls on Games. We'd love to see you there! Here are the signings at our booth:

Thursday 3:00 to 4:00 PM Mike Selinker and guest Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade

Thursday 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM James Ernest from Cheapass Games

Friday Noon to 1:00 PM Mike Selinker

Friday 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade

Friday 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Elisa Teague, Mike, Gaby Weidling, and other contributors to Girls on Games

Saturday 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM Mike Selinker

Sunday 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM Mike Selinker

Paizo booth 403

You can get a demo of our Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Base Set: Mummy's Mask at the Paizo booth! You can also pick up the new goblin decks Goblins Fight! and Goblins Burn! plus a million more PACG products. Signing at the Paizo booth:

Sunday Noon to 1:00 PM Mike Selinker and Pathfinder ACG  Developers

Puzzle hunt booth

Now in its 15th year, the Gen Con Puzzle Hunt remains one of the best puzzle hunts on earth. Start by finding the starting puzzle in your program booth, then look for all the placards all over the convention. When you solve some puzzles, come to the Gen Con Puzzle Hunt booth in the main hallway. You can win a badge to next year's Gen Con Indy!

Seminars and special events

Three booths is not enough for us Sharks! We're all over the rest of the con too. Games you can play:

All convention long Pathfinder Adventure Card Game tournaments: The Interactive Special, The PACG Open, Season of the Runelords, and Season of the Goblins - Sagamore Ballroom

Saturday from 9:00 PM to 11:00 AM Learn to Play Thornwatch - Room 141

Saturday from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM Sausage Party Mega Tournament - Room 141

Seminars:

Thursday from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM Are “Women in Gaming” Panels Serving Their Original Purpose? - Westin Capitol III - Marie, Jodie Wagner, Alex Barbieri, and Amber Cook

Thursday from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM The Big Co-op Game: From Betrayal to Thornwatch - Westin Capitol II - Mike, Mike Fehlauer, and Mike Krahulik

Thursday from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game - Room 212 - The PACG team

Thursday from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM The Hows & Whys of Inclusive Art Direction - Room 240 - Elisa, Anna Kreider, and Nicole Lindroos

Thursday from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM Beyond 101: Evolving Discussion of Women in Games - Room 240 - Marie, Katherine Cross, Ajit George, Anna Krieder, and Jessica Price

Friday from Noon to 1:00 PM The Freelancer's 10 Commandments - Room 240 - Elisa, Brian Cortijo, Ryan Miller, and Wes Schneider

Friday from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM Pathfinder & Obsidian Entertainment - Room 212 - Mike, Chad, Paizo, and Obsidian Entertainment

Friday from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM 5 Ways of Finding Your Spark - Room 240 - Elisa, Kathryn Hymes, and Jessica Price

Friday from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM Kickstarter 101 - Room 240 - Marie, Brian Poel, Mark Truman, and Eddy Webb

Friday from 10:00 PM to 11:30 PM Sh*tfaced Game Designers - Westin Capitol III - Mike, Elisa, Paul, Matt Forbeck, and Mike Elliott, "moderated" by Brian Lewis

Saturday from 11:00 AM to Noon Theme and Mechanics, Context Is Everything - Room 240 - Elisa, Matt Forbeck, Kenneth Hite, and Harrison Pink

Saturday from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM So You Want To Start A Game Company: The How Tos & Wherefores - Room 240 - Marie, Brian Poel, Zachary Strebeck, and Mike Pondsmith

Sunday from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM Raising Money To Publish Your Board Game - Room 241 - Marie, Donna Prior, and Zachary Strebeck

Those are our plans for Gen Con. Come find us and play with us!

Mike and the Sharks

[lonesharkgames]

Our Final Humble Puzzle Bundle Spotlight: Matt Jones’s No Holds Barred Crosswords

OK! We’ve just about reached the end of our Humble Puzzle Bundle, which ends at 11 AM PDT today. You guys have been really great and we thank you for your support. Here’s our final spotlight, on one of our favorite crossword books of the last few years, Matt Jones’s No Holds Barred Crosswords.

This book first appeared on Kickstarter, where lots of puzzle fans threw money at Matt to see what he’d do with barless crosswords. These puzzles have no black squares, just amazing patterns of white squares. Check this out.

That is 15 15-letter entries stacked on top of each other. That is something I don’t think anyone’s ever done. Every puzzle in this book is an eye-opener, and you should get it in the next couple hours. Because after that, the Humble Puzzle Bundle is history. Thanks for helping us make history!

[lonesharkgames]

Humble Puzzle Bundle Spotlight: Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Marching Bands

We have just one more day in a fairly humbling Humble Puzzle Bundle. We had no idea so many of you would jump on the puzzle bus. We would love to finish strong, so please tell your friends. For our penultimate spotlight, here’s a look at Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Marching Bands Year One, one of four books from the master in this bundle.

BEQ is one of the top cruciverbalists in the US of A. On his self-titled website he posts several puzzles a week just to entertain the masses. He also has biweekly clubs for two of his creations: diagramless puzzles and marching bands puzzles. You’ve probably heard of the former, but marching bands are new to some readers of this blog. In a marching bands, the words read both across in rows and around the grid in bands. Each band starts out heading across, then down, then backward, then up. The result is something like this.

Not only do we have Brendan’s Marching Bands Year One and Diagramlesses Year One, but we also have his Unthemely Crosswords and  ALT-X: Now Crosswords for Now People, and none of these books has ever been seen before. Maybe get them before the Humble Puzzle Bundle disappears tomorrow?

[lonesharkgames]

Humble Puzzle Bundle Spotlight: Child’s Play

As we reached 7,000 Humble Puzzle Bundle supporters, we’re thrilled to shine today’s spotlight on the third of our three featured charities. We already talked about the It Gets Better Project and Worldbuilders, but now it’s time for the one we share a building with: Child’s Play.

Created by the creative geniuses at Penny Arcade, Child’s Play became one of the top gaming-focused charities of all time. To date, they’ve raised $40 million to donate games and toys to children and families in hospitals and domestic violence shelters. I can’t think of a better thing the game industry could do. 

Here’s how it works. Child’s Play creates an Amazon.com wishlist consisting of games, consoles, and other age-appropriate entertainment gifts for kids. Hospitals, shelter, and advocacy centers then become part of the Child’s Play network and get sent toys and games from the wishlist. So if you imagine in your head what a pediatric care ward or domestic violence shelter looks like, and then imagine how it might be brightened by a couple Xboxes in it for the kids to play with, you can get a better idea of how powerful this concept is.

We’ve done some things at Lone Shark to benefit Child’s Play. Last December, we helped raise $15,000 for Child’s Play through our collaborations on the game Thornwatch and the escape rooms of Epic Team Adventures. A few years ago, Mike and his wife Evon donated some D&D books of theirs that were featured on an episode of The X-Files that Mike contributed dialogue to (you can read about that here or watch this video featuring Mike and Child’s Play co-founder Mike Krahulik.

So that’s why we decided to do a project that gives a bunch of money to Child’s Play. We can’t do it without you, of course. So if you’re inclined to contribute, and get a raft of cool puzzles for your troubles, please sign up for the Bundle!

[lonesharkgames]

Humble Bundle Puzzle Spotlight: Pavel Curtis’s Logical Leaps and Landings

Continuing on with our Humble Puzzle Bundle spotlight, we focus on one of the best things about this project: We got visual logic master Pavel Curtis to compile his best puzzles into a new book delightfully titled Logical Leaps and Landings: An Adalogical Ænigmas Collection. 

The “Adalogical” book purports to be written by Countess Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer. Were she alive today, she’d probably be thrilled with this collection. “Ranging from Challenging to Exceedingly Difficult” is a bang-on assessment of this collection. Pavel, who also creates the best physical manipulation puzzles, is among the best of us puzzlers at creating elegant solution paths that must be divined by the solver. Here’s an example.

Pavel is a true master of the logic puzzle genre, and we’re thrilled to have his Adalogical Ænigmas in the Humble Puzzle Bundle!

[lonesharkgames]

Humble Puzzle Bundle Spotlight: Patrick Blindauer’s Puzzlefests

Our little Humble Puzzle Bundle cracked six figures today, which is way more than we expected. That meant we unlocked all five hints we had on the website, but ... well, we might have some more tricks planned. Meanwhile, the spotlight continues to shine, today on Patrick Blindauer’s puzzlefests, including his creatively spelled Vega$ Puzzlefe$t.

These five puzzlefests—themed on Holidays, Summer, Space, Music, and Vegas—are suites of puzzles built around a theme. Here, Patrick has united several Vegas attractions, including this juggler. Watch the balls in play!

And there’s four more puzzlefests where that came from. Hope you like the puzzles! Just a few days left!

[lonesharkgames]

Humble Puzzle Bundle Spotlight: Patrick Berry’s Vicious Circle

We topped 6,000 backers for our Humble Puzzle Bundle. A lot of people thank you for it. We’ve been doing spotlights of our books and charities, and today the spotlight shines on the puzzle series Vicious Circle by Patrick Berry.

This is a “mini-ganza,” a tight little extravaganza of puzzles by the person many people think is the best crossword maker on the planet. Patrick Berry composes fantastic crosswords, but he’s also really good at other word puzzle types too. Here’s a circular wordplay puzzle from the series.

That’s elegant, clever stuff. If you want more elegant, clever stuff from Patrick, you’ll not only get Vicious Circle in the bundle, but at the $15 level you get a book of Cryptic crosswords called The Crypt. If you like cryptics, you’ll love that. Thanks for supporting the Humble Puzzle Bundle!