Our Finest Hour
about 3 years ago – Sat, Dec 04, 2021 at 01:45:33 AM

Congratulations, Heroes!

Yesterday was the last stand for our campaign. And thanks to your efforts, it was also our finest hour! 

Nearly 8,000 backers joined the party to raise over $585,000. That amount that has allowed us to add more cards to this game, improve the quality of components, and create some very fun bling that will make the entire Call to Adventure series shine on your shelf.

What's Next?

All you Kickstarter veterans know what happens next. But for anyone new to the wonderful world of crowdfunding, here's a little primer on the next steps in our adventure:

• First, Kickstarter will collect funds. This process takes a few days as Kickstarter will try multiple times to charge anyone with credit card issues. Keep an eye on your emails from Kickstarter to head off this problem. Note also that shipping costs will NOT be charged by Kickstarter. Those will be collected in BackerKit.
• Second, in 2-3 weeks you'll get an invitation to the pledge manager. We'll be using BackerKit for this. You will have to create a BackerKit account to participate. The pledge manager will calculate your remaining shipping costs, ask you to complete a survey of addresses and other information, and give you the opportunity to select add-ons! Note that add-ons will come with their own shipping costs, but we'll work to keep these as low as possible.
• Third, we will keep you updated over the coming months on production and fulfillment. We are targeting a summer 2022 fulfillment for this one, but production and shipping are challenging for everyone right now, so those dates may slip. We promise to keep you as informed as we can during this time.

Currently, this campaign is to support the English-language edition of Call To Adventure. However, international publishers have noticed this campaign's success, and right now we're in talks to add a couple of localized versions in BackerKit. French and Spanish translations look the most promising so far, but we'll keep you posted. 

Thank you again for all your support. We're fond of saying this company got its start on Kickstarter, and Kickstarter keeps it going. This project helps fund everything we do, including some very exciting new projects next year.

We've enjoyed writing these daily updates, but we'll be dialing it back in the weeks ahead. The next time we e-mail you, it should be with details about the pledge manager. Talk to you soon!

All About Add-Ons
about 3 years ago – Sat, Dec 04, 2021 at 01:20:30 AM

Heroes, we’re in the final hours of this campaign. It’s been an incredible two weeks and we’re thrilled to be over 1000% funded. If you’re a $1 backer who’s been waiting to fully jump in, now’s your chance to pledge at the $40 Adventurer level and unlock the Forgotten Feats pack of cards for Kickstarter backers!

For everyone else, this is a great chance to talk about Add-Ons and the BackerKit pledge manager.

Getting Your Add On

If you’ve never used a pledge manager before, it’s designed to be as easy as possible for you!

• At the end of this campaign, Kickstarter will charge you for the amount you’ve pledged.
• Once all payments have processed, you’ll get an email link to the BackerKit pledge manager.
• In BackerKit, you’ll complete a “survey” confirming your pledge.
• You’ll also be able to select your add-ons. Your Kickstarter pledge amount will already be credited in BackerKit, and you can add more funds if you want to put more add-ons in your cart.
• You’ll be able to review and update your address, confirm shipping fees, and complete your transaction.

We’ll follow up with a more detailed update after this campaign, but the key thing to know is that if you want add-ons, you can add those funds now or later. Adding them now will help give the campaign a final boost, so we encourage that!

Add-On Options

You’ll see a lot of add-on options in BackerKit, including discounted versions of other Brotherwise Games! But here’s a list of all the awesome Call to Adventure add-ons we’ll have available:

Let’s take a closer look at some of the coolest options!

First up, there are the special promo cards we created specifically for Kickstarter backers. Heed the Call will be included free for anyone who backed in our first 24 hours, but we wanted to give later backers a chance to get it. The Reprinted Rarities pack will be a limited run – we’ll definitely have enough for everyone in this campaign, but we don’t plan to reprint it in the future.

One of the best things about Call To Adventure is the beautiful artwork from some of the industry's top fantasy artists. So with this campaign, we're offering special art decks for the first time. They're perfect visual aids for TTRPG players, they make great inspiration images for writers, and they're just gorgeous to look at. Each deck is just $10, and includes 100 tarot-sized cards featuring our favorite images from each set. 

 Because we created such an awesome package for the Deluxe Edition of Epic Origins, a lot of people have asked for ways to upgrade their old boxes to match the tome-styled magnetic-clasp design. You’ll have the option to pick both Deluxe Edition boxes in BackerKit! Note that this is literally an empty box (no insert or other contents), so fans looking for the full Deluxe Edition of The Stormlight will want to add that separately.

We’ve developed some truly premium accessories for Call To Adventure, and this campaign is a great chance to get them at a discount (20% off the usual retail pricing):

• The custom printed sleeves will ensure you have the right combination of Tarot- and poker-sized sleeves to protect your games. One set will cover Epic Origins (or another large set) plus The Name of the Wind expansion with plenty extra for promo cards. Three sets will cover every Call To Adventure card we’ve printed! This set will include new sleeves for Heritage cards and double-sided Adversary cards.
• The neoprene playmat is a beautiful addition to your table, gives you the perfect surface for tossing runes, and sits in the center of the table so only one is needed per playgroup.
• The Folded Space insert organizes every card and component in the game, separating everything into distinct components. It holds one large set plus The Name of the Wind if cards are sleeved, and two large sets if cards are unsleeved. It includes extra Tarot wells to separate out expansion cards, and every individual tray is removable so you can organize your decks on the table.

There will be even more available add-ons in BackerKit, but those are the big ones! If you have any questions, just ask in the comments and we’ll get right back to you.

The Final Countdown

With just a few hours to go, we’re excited for a strong finish! Thank you so much for your support. We’re grateful for every pledge, and we’ve been blown away by how many people have upgraded their pledges or shared this campaign on social media. We love how passionate people are about this game, and we can’t wait to get it into the hands of returning fans and new players. Here’s to a great ending to a fantastic campaign!

A Rewarding Campaign
about 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 09:18:10 PM

Good morning, heroes! What a journey this has been. In just 15 days, we've accomplished so much. We're over 900% funded and almost 6,500 backers have contributed to make this game a success. We blew through our last stretch goal overnight, unlocking the highly-requested Adversary-specific feats. Now each playthrough against the Adversary will feel that much more personal. 

And with that last goal unlocked, now's a good time reflect on everything you'll be getting as a backer. If you've been following this campaign and deciding whether or not to back, we hope this update inspires you to join the party.

From Hearthside Story to Epic Adventure

This campaign started with what we think was a great game in a great package, but over the past 18 days, you all have made it so much more. Just look at what's been unlocked in this campaign!

One More Chapter

We've heard from a lot of backers asking about some of the hardest-to-find cards for Call To Adventure. Rights issues have kept us from reprinting these, but we heard this request from so many backers that we went back to our partners and asked for the go-ahead. So we're printing a limited run of these impossible-to-find cards, and making them available to Kickstarter backers as a $5 add-on pack. (If you want this pack, you can add $5 to your pledge now or wait until you're completing the Pledge Manager in BackerKit.)

It's just another example of what we love about Kickstarter: the chance to listen to players and give you what you want! Thank you for your feedback, support, and excitement during this campaign. Congratulations to all of us, and keep spreading the word as this campaign enters its final 24 hours!

Bringing it All Together
about 3 years ago – Wed, Dec 01, 2021 at 01:01:16 AM

Our journey is nearly at its end! We're amazed to see how far we’ve come in two short weeks, and excited by what can be accomplished in the campaign’s final two days.

Just yesterday, we unlocked another stretch goal: the Artist Origin card! The illustration for this one is still underway, but this means we’ve unlocked three additional Origin cards during this campaign.

Today we have  two more rewards to share, and a closer look at how all your Call To Adventure games play together.

Bonus Backgrounds

Last week, we wrote about how Epic Origins will include a downloadable guide for converting Call To Adventure characters into 5th edition 1st-level characters. To help make that conversion as seamless as possible, we’re creating bonus Backgrounds based on several of our Origin cards. Click here for a look at Runaway.

We know that not everyone who backs this project is a D&D player, but we’ve heard from a lot of people who are, and we think this is just something cool that ought to exist. This bonus content is something we’ll create after final development work is complete on Epic Origins, and we’ll deliver it as a PDF in the Spring.

Enhanced Adversaries

The Adversary system in Epic Origins is already a big improvement on the original game. The double-sided Adversaries ensure an evolving challenge while the new Adversary abilities have an impact on every decision you make.

In the original Call To Adventure, some cards in the Antihero deck doubled as Adversary feats, but they weren’t always as clear or balanced as they could be. In Epic Origins, we’ve purpose-built a deck of six Adversary feat cards that have proven to be a lot of fun in playtesting.

When we first revealed these cards, we heard from a number of backers who said they’d like to see cards more specific to the Adversaries. At first we said no, because we know these cards already work well and there’s value in having a consistent set of effects for players to bear in mind. But we also liked the idea of making the Final Adversary a little more “present” throughout the game.

So here’s what we’ve designed: a set of seven Adversary feats that will be unlocked along with their corresponding Adversaries during Campaign Mode. Each one ties to the specific Adversary pictured on the card, and is shuffled into the Adversary feat deck when you’re facing that Adversary. (The “Adversary’s Agent” card can be used with any of the “Alternate Adversaries” that you’ll unlock in your final Campaign Mode envelope.)

We have one more bonus reveal to share tomorrow, but this is our final stretch goal!

Combining Sets

We’ve heard a lot of questions about how to combine Epic Origins with other editions of Call To Adventure. Here’s the rundown of the ways you can play Epic Origins:

•  On Its Own: We designed this game as a great standalone experience, packed with high fantasy flavor. As a jumping-on point, we think it’s even stronger than the original Call To Adventure.
•  With the Original: For the ultimate storytelling experience, we recommend playing Epic Origins with the original. For competitive play, simply set aside the original Adversary cards. For co-op play, remove any Antihero cards with the skull watermark. Then shuffle everything together and play!
•  With the Stormlight Archive or the Name of the Wind: For those of you who want to combine cards from these sets while maintaining the distinctive flavor and mechanics of each world, we’ll provide detailed guides on which cards to add and remove.
•  With Everything! For maximum variety – and a bit of chaos – you can combine every Call To Adventure card in your collection. Because this can dilute some mechanics, our combination guide will include a couple of special rules to keep final scoring balanced in these games.

Whatever combination of games you want to play, we’ll have recommendations for how to ensure the best experience!

Final Push

This campaign has been awesome, but we’d love to see even more people join in our final 48 hours. If you know anyone who might want this game, let them know! If you use Facebook or Instagram and you’re willing to make a Story post about this campaign, here’s an image you can save and share:

Here’s another vertical version and here’s a square option. We appreciate anything you can do. Pre-order campaigns and Kickstarters are hugely important to small businesses like ours, so if you like Brotherwise Games, this is the best way to help us grow.

Thanks for everything, and here’s to a big final 48 hours!

Stories Within Stories
about 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 02:21:45 AM

Gather 'round and listen to our tale! Our story begins two weeks ago at the beginning of this campaign. Each day of our journey, as our numbers have grown, we've surpassed every goal set before us. A few hours ago, we unlocked three new Challenge cards!

As we enter the final days of this campaign, we wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about how Call to Adventure has become even more than we meant it to be. Call to Adventure and its expansions had two defining inspirations: fantasy literature and RPG character design. We've talked about how this game connects to tabletop RPGs, but for today, let's talk about how the game both starts with and leads to fantasy storytelling.

You are the Storyteller!

 At Brotherwise, we love stories. Our father is a voracious reader of speculative lit, and early on he instilled in both brothers a devotion to stories that take you to new worlds of magic and wonder. Because of that, the power of stories was always in our thoughts when we designed the game.

Every player in Call to Adventure begins the game with the kernel of a story, and ends the game with a complete one. Whether that story was constructed deliberately by privileging cool paths over points, or whether it was constructed secondarily to a maxed-out Destiny score, your final tableau tells the story of your hero's humble beginnings, the trials they've faced, the decisions they've made, and ultimately, the destiny they've embraced. It's part of the game that makes Call to Adventure more than fun; it makes it (we hope) delightful.

At the end of every Call to Adventure game, players have the option of telling their hero’s story. It’s a creative moment we hope you’ll embrace. We’ve heard from countless players that it’s their favorite part of the game. We’ve seen dozens of short stories and hundreds of RPG characters inspired by sessions of the original game. We even know of at least one creative writing classes that uses the game to get students started!

So whether you are a new Call to Adventure player, or an old one, pull up a seat in front of the hearth, whet your whistle with a good drink, pull out the game box, and tell your friends of your adventures!

The Next Stretch

Speaking of creation, Epic Origins wouldn't be possible without the hundreds of hours poured into this game by our team of artists and graphic designers. Today we’re thrilled to honor that dedication with a new origin, the Artist. This is a Constitution & Intelligence origin to represent the creativity behind great art and the commitment that it takes. This origin also speaks to the way every artist is shaped by their experiences, good and bad. Whenever your artist hero moves up or down the corruption track, they’ll gain an experience token.

 Appropriately enough, this piece is still in progress! In the meantime, this stretch goal image includes two color sketches by artist's artist Anndr Pazyniuk. This goal is already drawing near, so come back tomorrow for one last multi-card stretch goal!