Hey folks, Sylvan here!

Thanks to all of your incredible, sensational support, Before the Flood has now crossed the pivotal $10,000 mark. We're less than $500 away from triple our funding goal, which is nuts. As promised, we'll be extending the Book of Legend to be twice its length (which may involve upgrading it from a zine to a small bound book, depending on page count). As a thank you, I've pulled a couple of my favorite lines from the Book to share with you here today:

One of the reasons that I love the Book of Legend so much is that, taken as an individual object, it can serve as strange and wonderful prompts for all sorts of stories. You could use it in your other tabletop campaigns, or to kickstart your writing process, or to improvise a story for your kid at bedtime. As part of Before the Flood, though, its role is totally different: the otherwise cohesive and coherent prompts are sliced up so that the individual words themselves are the content. The sentence is irrelevant to Legend--it's the word that matters. So when writing the Book, Nic and I are really focusing on making sure that each adjective, noun, verb, and adverb is as weighty and portentous as it possibly can be. I hope that you've enjoyed this sneak peek!

I am over the moon to be able to announce the details for our live stream this Sunday, August 11th. The stream will be one hour long, starting at 1:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. Nic and I will be joined by three lovely guests to talk about game design philosophies and why we love map-making games, and the stream will be embedded right here on Backerkit for you to enjoy. If you prefer, you can head over to Twitch, where you can chat with us live!

But enough with the logistics. Announcing our guests (drumroll please...)

Of course, Nic and I will be there too... but this isn't really about us. We'll mostly just be there to facilitate these three awesome humans talking it up with each other! So mark your calendars. It's a hell of a lineup.

Phew! That was quite an update. Looking ahead to the final week, you can expect that designer diary update from me about picklists, a few sneak peeks at art or layout, and one or two more special surprises. Until then, we're less than $2000 away from our next stretch goal to give the team raises, and we've got more in store after that. Anything you can do to share the project, tell your friends, talk us up, or get the name out there would be immensely, immensely appreciated. This last week is the most delicate time in the project aside from launch--anything you can do to get the word out would be awesome.

But hey. You're already awesome. You read this far, just because you wanted to.

Have a cookie, and tell me in the comments what flavor it is: 🍪

With giddy anticipation,
Sylvan

PS: Okay, fine. Here's another one 🍪

Hey folks, Sylvan here once again!

From what I hear, Gen Con was a delightful, chaotic, incredibly fun experience for everyone that went, and I am so thrilled that so many of you got the chance to chat with Nic about Before the Flood while you were there! On my end, I've been plugging away all weekend at the game, noodling around with playtest balancing. I figured that you might want a bit more of a devlog-esque update at some point, so I've started working on a design diary type of post for you. Stay tuned for that before the end of the campaign, I'll be sending that out soon. I'm looking to key you in on a few more specific design choices that Nic and I have made--in particular, I'm going to be telling you about what goes into writing a picklist for Before the Flood and why we decided to ritualize certain elements of the game. Hopefully that'll be interesting for you!

As of the time of writing this update, we're right around the corner from our $10,000 stretch goal to double the length of the Book of Legend. When we hit that goal, I'll be posting a much-requested preview of the Book of Legend itself to give you a taste of the sorts of story hooks we're including inside. And of course, as we've said previously, we've been brainstorming new stretch goals for that 10-20K range!

The first new goal will be a $12,000 stretch goal to give our team another small raise as a thank-you. I can't express to you how much work everyone has put into this project--MC did, at one point, field business calls with us from a mountaintop in the middle of a backpacking trip. Reese sketched concept art for us on her lunch break in between shifts at her day job. Nic and I would frequently clock out of our day jobs and immediately go home and work on the game manuscript (or, in my case, work on the game during my shifts... don't tell my former managers). The point is, I can't think of a better first stretch goal than another raise. Trust me--these people deserve it.

We'll be posting more stretch goals as we get closer to them--I don't want to make any promises yet, but we're considering some really neat stuff, like a guest artist for the map template, discounted copies of Gravemire available as an add-on for this campaign only, even more art from Reese, and more. We've got ideas! We'll see how the campaign does as we're entering the last few weeks to gauge feasibility for each one.

I know this update is getting pretty long, but I did want to clue you in on ooooone last little thing... we're going to be doing a little end-of-campaign livestream on the campaign page next weekend. I won't give away too much until we have all the details finalized, but you can expect a couple of guest game designers (names you will likely recognize) to come and chop it up with Nic and me about game design philosophy, the power of ritual narrative, our favorite games, and lots more. Think of it as a just-for-you talk show with some incredibly brilliant people (and me), live streamed one time only. I am unbelievably psyched for it, and will give you new details soon!

You'll be hearing from me again soon. Until then, rest up and take it easy after your busy, busy weekend!

A little too verbosely,
Sylvan

PS: The Garden of Automata won the sticker poll, and will be our sticker design! Huzzah for robots!

Hello all, Nicholas here today!

We've hit the $8000 stretch goal!! Gone right past it really, and headed towards the next one already. Thank you all! This means the entire team gets raises, which we're all very excited for.

The next stretch goal will double the length of the Book of Legend, giving all those who have purchased a copy much more to flip through and pull inspiration from. We're also, as Sylvan mentioned in the last update, starting to think of more stretch goals to aspire towards. Which is not something we thought we would have to do! So thank you all, again and again, for all of your support.

On to part two of this update, which is that I am going to be at Gen Con this following week! Come find me at the Indie Press Revolution booth, #241. I'd love to chat about Before the Flood, how your con is going, or anything else involving TTRPGs. We're going to have around 169 different games at the booth and I promise to know at least one thing about every one of them (not counting the title). 

Hope to see you there!

Hey folks, Sylvan here!

What an incredible first three days on Backerkit. As of the time of this update, we've hit our first FOUR stretch goals. Nic and I are getting paid, you are all getting stickers, the design of which is being decided as we speak by this poll, Reese gets to add more art to the book, and now you're all getting a fancy bookmark tucked into your orders as well.

The next stretch goal gives the team a raise, and after that, I'm going to have to start cooking up some new targets and rewards for you all! Your support truly means the world to me, and by the end of this I'm going to sound like an absolute broken record, but I mean it every time.

Thank you all.

With astonishment and gratitude,
Syl

Hey folks, Sylvan here.

We are delighted and astonished in equal measure that Before the Flood has hit its funding goal in under 24 hours. As of the time of writing this update, we're at over $3700 USD, which is absolutely incredible. We are humbled and grateful beyond words.

Even more importantly than money, though, is the fact that over 100 people have come together so far to support this amazing project. One of my goals going in to Before the Flood was to make it as affordable as possible--that the zine itself would be affordable, that the rewards would be reasonably priced, that everything was accessible to you, the player. It was immensely important to me that we lower the barrier to entry as much as we could afford to. We're a small team, but we all really believe in the power of indie tabletop games, the strength of cooperative, communal storytelling, and the magic of narrative. It means so, so much to me that so many of you are already on board with our ideas and our art. Thank you. Truly. Thank you.

Of course, that was just day 1, and we've got a whole month left of excitement and fun. We've got many stretch goals to hit, including Nic and I actually getting paid a wage at $4,000, and giving you all fancy, beautiful bookmarks for free at $7,000, among others. If you want to jump straight to stretch goals and peruse what's coming, here's a link.

You've already done the most supportive thing you can do -- back this project -- but if you want to take it one step further, it would be immensely helpful if you could help spread the word about the game. Post about it on Twitter, Bluesky, Discord, Tumblr... your gamer channels on Slack spaces, whatever gets the word out! Tell anyone that you think might be interested to check us out. Every little bit helps, and a rising tide raises all ships. The more funding we get, the more goodies we can get into your hands.

For now, though, we're mostly jut awestruck and grateful for your generosity. You guys rock. Thank you.

Humbly,
Sylvan