Starting Week 3 with a ton of news!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 04:55:08 PM

Hi everyone!

Hope you had a great weekend! We had so much going on that when we listed it all out for today's update, we were surprised by how much news there is to share! Never a dull moment around here!

For example, the fan-based ENnie Awards have announced their 2021 Judges' Winners... and our own project lead ANDREW E.C. GASKA has been selected for two more awards! :D

•  Best Adventure: ALIEN RPG Destroyer of Worlds, Free League Publishing,  Author: Andrew E.C. Gaska 
•  Best Cartography: ALIEN RPG Destroyer of Worlds,  Free League Publishing, Christian Granath, Andrew E.C. Gaska 

Congrats, Andrew! You know that Carbon Grey is in good hands when your lead keeps raking in awards... ;)

You can check out the full list of Nominees at the Ennie Awards website:

 In other news, Geek Native ran a nice interview with Andrew and me last week -- check it out!

Big thanks to Andrew Girdwood at GeekNative!

CAMPAIGN PAGE UPDATES

You may or may not have noticed some more visual updates to the campaign page as of today, specifically:

New trailer!

We replaced the main campaign trailer with a brand new one that spotlights the different roles and archetypes you can assume in the game. If you haven't seen it (since it is "hidden" behind the main campaign banner), here it is: 

 The original trailer is still visible at the top of the campaign story. But there are plenty of other interesting changes further down the page...

Stretch Goals revealed!

That's right -- we're showing off all of the Stretch Goals we have on deck. Granted, these were a lot more spread out when we (over-optimistically) put the campaign together, but we've tightened up the goals a bit and revealed them all on the campaign:

If I can be 100% honest here... I have to admit that we are all a bit surprised and humbled by how slowly the campaign has grown since its launch. Looking at some other projects in the category, we were (naively) expecting to be at least a third of the way through this list by now. I say that not to complain in any way -- we hit our goal, so we are doing this! -- but rather to emphasize to you folks that all of these Stretch Goals are completely planned and ready to go. The Solo Play Module and Serial Play Campaign do need to be finished and laid out, but they have been thoroughly outlined, so it's just a matter of determining if we can generate enough interest (and pre-orders) to justify the print run.

Those three highest-ticket items (the Wraith, Purge Commandos, and Air Combat System) are also designed, with miniature sculpts already completed and prototyped. But they will clearly be more expensive to produce after-the-fact, hence their higher unlock targets. The Air Expansion System is almost an entirely unique and complete tabletop game on its own.  Let's be frank -- it's not looking very likely that we'll unlock it with this campaign, but we sure would like to see it down the road if we can bring enough interested players to the universe...

(As proof of development, here are some renders of the airship models built by Kieran Russell --)

Box Set now includes "Season Pass"

You may have noticed that MOST of those Stretch Goal items will be FREE BONUSES for ALL PHYSICAL TIER PLEDGES! That means everyone who's getting a physical shipment will get those extra items added to their reward package for FREE. 

However, some of the Stretch Goals are listed as "Add-ons" -- these will be made available for purchase to add to any pledge package. But we really want to encourage people to get the awesome Deluxe Boxed Set, so we're declaring that the Boxed Set also includes a "Season Pass" -- that means all of the extra unlockable Add-on content (*) will be included with Boxed Set Pledge Tiers for FREE! 

That means the Solo-play Module, the Serial Campaign Module, the Dice mat, and the two new enemy minis will be added to all Boxed Set pledges for FREE (assuming they have been unlocked), as well as any other new module content released in 2022. That's like $110 worth of extra stuff not counting any additional module content we haven't thought of yet! We really do have all kinds of additional content modules in mind for this title, so if enough players show enough interest in the title, we could easily release 3-4 new modules in the next year or so.

(*This does not include the Air Combat Expansion, however... that would be its own complete boxed product...)

A word of reassurance...

I know that some of you may be looking at the numbers and thinking "Are these people really going to deliver? Or will they go the way of so many other first-time Kickstarter campaigns that don't know what they're doing and fail to follow through with their promises?" That is a totally understandable concern. We've backed our fair share of campaigns that evaporated as soon as pledges were collected. And we will not be one of those. We've run a dozen successful campaigns to date (granted, in the Graphic Novel category), and we are committed to not only the platform, but this project, and Magnetic Press Play as a brand. CARBON GREY is only the first release in our planned slate, and we will not jeopardize your faith in us the first time out of the gate. That's why we made sure that this game is ready for mass production right now. Starry Games have been prototyping and preparing for the final manufacturing quantity for months.  We're pretty much ready to push the button. We just want to make sure we gauge that initial print run responsibly based on this initial interest.

We have just under 3 weeks left in this campaign. A lot can happen in that time. We have some promotional strategies in the works that should help boost the numbers, but since we're new to this game (no pun intended), we'll take all the grassroots word-of-mouth support we can get! If you're able to share the campaign with your friends and gaming community, we can turn this modest freshman title into a real hit! If you are part of any Facebook groups or follow any Twitch or Youtube channels, let them know you're excited by this cool new title from a cool new indie developer based on the awesome D6 System by the venerable West End Games! We'd be happy to provide them with a Quickstart Guide and whatever assets they need to give the game a proper look!

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We've got a few more suprises lined up for the week, so stay tuned and as mentioned earlier -- SPREAD THE WORD! Oh, and if we haven't said it recently:

THANK YOU! 

Quickstart questions answered, a peek at future enemy types, and our first giveaway!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 10:26:51 AM

Hi everyone!

We've received a lot of great questions and feedback from the Quickstart guide since posting it, and the design team is super grateful! We've been responding as quickly as possible (while also still working on wrapping up the game for manufacturing), and have revised the PDF  along the way. While it has been mostly cosmetic and minor stuff, if you want to be sure you have the latest version of the Quickstart PDF, be sure to download it from the link on the main Carbon Grey Kickstarter campaign page (not from the link in yesterday's update). If any other things come up and need to be fixed we'll continue to update the link on the main campaign page and keep you posted of anything critical. (And once Drivethru RPG has activated it, they will be sure anyone who downloads it from there is notified of available updates.)

While we will try to answer questions in the comments section as they are asked, we may find it easier to collect answers into one of these updates here. We have a bunch at the bottom of this update, for example, but before we get into those details, we wanted to announce something else that is very cool...

Our first weekly giveaway!

We have been planning a number of fun and exciting giveaway contests for the course of this campaign, and we're trying it out with our first one this week:

Since we hit our initial funding goal, we wanted to celebrate by giving away one exclusive "Shard of Gottfaust" d6 dice to two lucky winners each week for the next 3 weeks! These cool, faceted, cylindrical dice look like pieces of the fabled Gottfaust Stone and can be used in gameplay like any other 6-sided dice. These will only be available to two lucky winners each week for the next 3 weeks! Winners will be selected at midnight each Monday and announced each Tuesday until the campaign ends. If you don't win one this week, keep trying! We've got three weeks to go!

It costs nothing to enter, no pledge or purchase is necessary. Just follow the link to sign up and if you want to increase your odds of winning, you can complete other simple tasks to add more entries to your ticket. Check it out at https://gleam.io/tePc8/carbon-grey-weekly-giveaway-1! Trust me, you'll want to give it a peek, since you also get to vote on two new unlockable stretch goal enemy types!

These two awesome enemy types were sculpted by Kieran Russell and they are HOT. We're really hoping we can add those to the mix, but we'll be honest... we've got a little ways to go before these beauties come into view... We're making some headway towards the Challenge Coin at $50k, but we have soooo much more planned! Please spread the word and help bring more folks to the party! We're working with our PR group on some exciting initiatives and press plans that will be rolled out over the next week or two, but in the meantime, we are all about the grassroots power of word-of-mouth! We're really learning a lot from this first campaign, and while we maybe coulda/shoulda hit the chat boards much sooner, that's now behind us and we're focusing forward with full intensity! :) This game IS coming out and it IS gonna be awesome! Let's bring as many people along for the ride as we can! This is just the dawn of the Carbon Grey universe!

Some answers from the Dev Team

Backer Emmanuel Papst submitted many excellent questions which Drew and Eric have answered below.

Q: Hero points can be used to mitigate the Wounded, Incapacitated, or Mortally Wounded condition. Does it mean that mitigating each of those conditions just costs 1 hero point or do I have to spent 1 hero point per wound level, for instance mortally wounded would cost me 3 hero points?

A: That's how it was initially, but the world of Carbon Grey is a brutal one, and we wanted to give balance to gameplay. We have changed it to make one Hero Point reduce an injury to stunned regardless of its level. Now you may live. So 1 Hero Point reduces ANY injury to just a Stunned result!

Q: Does Surprise occur when the ambushed side's perception is beneath the ambushers' to get the bonus basic attack at the start and after that bonus action initiative is immediately rolled again?

A: The initiative is rolled. Readied Initiative (Reflex) for the ambushers/ Surprised Initiative (Instinct) for those being surprised. The Ambusher gets their "free" Surprise Action and then the combat order is handled as normal, even if the ambushers are going first and in essence, getting a partial and full turn before those that rolled surprised initiative. Having a high Surprised Initiative means you only have to suffer the partial “Surprise Actions” from your ambushers when surprised. You get a chance to fight back before getting a full round of attacks/actions against you.  Once combat has run a full round both sides roll Readied Initiative all following rounds until the fight is over.

Q: Surprised defense and Ready defense are strictly for hand-to-hand combat only?

A: No, they are for all combat. Surprised Defense is used when you are being surprised and Readied Defense is used when you are not being surprised. Think of Surprised as a bad feeling trouble is about to strike or just sensing the danger (this is why it is based on PER) and Readied as prepared for what is incoming (why is based on DEX)

Q: There are no action segments per round like in Star Wars 1st edition?

A: Instead of action segments, we went for a more frenzied fray feel of combat. Rolling initiative every round adds to this feeling while promoting fairness and rewarding good tactics from players.

Q: Can movement be split on your turn (which would be very cool)? For instance, if I want to take a quick movement (6m) and declare to take the first 3m, then shoot and then take the remaining 3m to get some cover?

A: Yes! You can split movement as all of your actions happen at the same time.

Q: NPCs seem to have additional traits/talents like Watchful for the Elite Guard for instance. Will there be such talents for PC's available as well?

A: The new Quirks rules fill this role for PCs. The NPC abilities give a bit of flavor to each and provide challenges for PCs to keep them on their toes even when facing an enemy with fewer abilities and skills than they have.

Q: Will I be able to define individual archetypes from scratch?

A: Yes!  The core book provides a few simple rules to make your own template—if none of the twenty-four PC templates catches your fancy.

Q: Btw. I noticed a typo on p. 45, I guess the sniper rifle's name is intended to be Witwenmacher (widow maker) and not Wirwenmacher.

A: Indeed, you are correct! Thanks for pointing it out to us—the fans have been great in helping us catch these little typos. Thanks for the great questions.

The (FREE) Quickstart Guide is here! Download it today!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 10, 2021 at 07:19:32 PM

Hi everyone!

We hope you had a great weekend. I know I mentioned on Friday that the Quickstart Guide was going to be posted this weekend, and we truly meant to do so, but it ballooned a bit from our original 48-page plan... We thought we could convey the majesty of CARBON GREY in under 50 pages, but in proper evaluation, we decided to make it a whopping 80 pages instead! :)

DOWNLOAD THE QUICKSTART GUIDE:

This PDF is a condensed version of the full game, designed to introduce you to the world of Carbon Grey and the Magnetic Variant of the West End Games D6 System ruleset. It also includes an introductory adventure and a handful of pre-generated characters to play. For the full experience of this war-torn world, you'll ultimately need the Core Rulebook or Deluxe Boxed Set.

The file is currently hosted on our Dropbox, but there should be sufficient traffic in our business account to allow plenty of downloads. BUT... we are also excited to announce that all of our digital downloads for this campaign will ultimately be handled by DRIVETHRU RPG and DRIVETHRU COMICS!

Not only is Drivethru the leading digital marketplace for gaming files, but it was also started by Steve Wieck... who not only founded White Wolf, but now also co-manages the West End Games brand with Nocturnal Media. So there is certainly some synergy at work. :)

We've completed our distribution agreement with them and uploaded the Quickstart and Settings Primer, but those files are still in their approval queue, so rather than wait any longer, we posted them on Dropbox for now. Once they have been approved and made Live on Drivethru, we will update the link on the webpage accordingly.

We can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Drew, Eric, and the rest of the design team are coming out of their development caves soon and we'll be setting up some AMA-type Q&A sessions to discuss the game, but feel free to send us any Qs in the meantime.

We would LOVE to hear about your first taste of gameplay! And if you post any videos or recorded podcast reviews, we will share them here (assuming they're not too embarrassing...)

Now that the Quickstart Guide is available to the public, our PR team is slipping it under every door and windshield wiper we can find, so hopefully the gaming community will start to hear more about this awesome project very soon... we won't lie, hitting our starting goal in the first day was great, but it's taking a lot longer than we expected to hit even the $50k stretch goal (GET THAT COIN!!), let alone make progress towards the other amazing goals we have lined up. So we are putting in overtime getting the word out, and we welcome any help you might be able to offer by sharing the project with everyone you think would like it, too! We've learned a lot from this as our first campaign in the games category, and we are trying to be as reactive and nimble as possible to make this successful for everyone. You might have noticed a substantial facelift to the campaign page over the weekend -- that's due to some great feedback from some of you awesome backers! Hopefully, it looks even tighter and sharper now, with 3 weeks left to capture new eyeballs!

We have some other exciting incentives in the works to hopefully bring in more pledges, so stay tuned and spread the word! 

There's plenty more to come!

First Stretch Goal unlocked!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 07:45:45 PM

Hi everyone!

Didn't take you long to take us from "funded" to "first stretch goal unlocked"! Woohoo! 

With this milestone, every backer at a physical reward tier will get an 8.5x11" linen cardstock print of this amazing piece by Hoang Nguyen, Khari Evans, and Kinson Loh!

Next up: Challenge Coin!

Those of you who have backed our previous 7 campaigns know what these are: cool, heavy, 2" metal collectible coins that we're only offering as part of this campaign. They aren't available later on in Backerkit. We only produce them to satisfy the campaign. And they truly are becoming collectible!

Just take a look at some of the previous ones:

We have a lot more cool unlockables planned, but we will reveal them one at a time as we go... I know a lot of other gaming campaigns show the whole chart upfront, but where's the fun in that? ;) Spoiler alert, right? We wanna save some surprises for later, y'know, keep things interesting!

I mean, sure, we'd love to show everything we have lined up right now, but our roll-out strategy is a little more organic -- rather than committing to a bunch of milestones that end up being too far apart (or too close together), we want to keep the next one always within reach. This has worked out pretty well for everyone on our last few Graphic Novel campaigns --  and folks ended up with a ton of awesome bonus stuff.  We just need to make sure that the cost of those unlocked items is covered along the way, and everything's good. (Some of them might stay towards the top of the ladder because of those costs, but believe me, everything is achievable -- we've seen it done, and we've got the materials ready to roll...)

"C'mon, man... at least give us a hint..."

Okay, but we wanna keep some mystery to the sequence and the specific milestone number they're tied to... Here are just a few of the things we already have in the works that can be unlocked over the next four weeks:

• Bonus in-world artifacts, like real Mitteleuropa patches and pins 
• Additional environments and territory maps to explore
• Additional enemy types with miniatures (including the elite Purge Commando Unit and the giant Dragon Wraith)
• A full Solo Play Adventure 
• A complete group Adventure Campaign 
• A complete, standalone Air Combat tactical Expansion set with miniatures 

...and lots of other cool gameplay enhancements like spinner coins, dice trays, and... other stuff. We've said too much already. Rest assured, we've planned ahead. And we really hope all that planning and design pays off for you! :D

Thanks again for coming on board! This party is just starting!

Things are happening!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 07:41:46 PM

Hey everyone! 

Happy Friday and hope you're prepping for a killer weekend!

A lot has been happening here and we are bouncing between email windows, InDesign, Slack Channels, Zoom meetings, Photoshop, After Effects, back into email, Zoom again, more email, opening and approving proofs (WOW, COOL), setting up new distro channels, lining up cool press coverage, more emails, receiving fully-executed agreements for future cool games (to be revealed soon)... whew. TGIF.

Today was also pretty busy for the Carbon Grey dev team, not just polishing the hinges on the Quickstart Guide (STAY TUNED) but also engaging with The Dark Orb live Video Podcast today!

Game lead Andrew E.C. Gaska was their surprise guest (thanks to Victory Condition's Doug Shute) to the delight of the hosts. What was supposed to be an hour-long show turned into nearly 2h 20 mins of interesting conversation about the Alien RPG, gaming in general, and of course, a good hour's worth of CARBON GREY talk! :D

You can watch the whole thing here (or just to have it on in the background for knowledge osmosis, it's good stuff):

We've also been getting some fun proofs, diagrams, and dummies from our manufacturing partner, Starry Games -- while it may only appear to be blueprints and unprinted photos, they are indications of actual WORK IN PROGRESS! From these, the actual prototypes and final printed files will be grown in the next short couple of weeks!

For example:

We've decided to turn the signature Magnetic Press curved corners design element up to eleven by curving the page corners on the rulebook, too--

They have also been engineering our box and trays for packaging and believe me -- that alone is a SCIENCE. Just look at these diagrams and marvel at the craftmanship...:

If you weren't sure if the Deluxe Box was going to be worth it, IT WILL. Definitely, the version to own.

This is exciting - we're very used to seeing books prototyped and delivered, but this is our first time (as Magnetic Press) to see physical products coming together. (We've produced physical cold-cast statues in our previous career, but this really is something unique for us...)

Hopefully, we will have some photos of the first printed minis and custom dice to share soon.

And YES, the Quickstart Guide will be ready this weekend, too. In fact, if we don't have the link itself tomorrow, we will have some (cool) news about it in tomorrow's update. You may also notice some cosmetic changes to the Kickstarter page itself tomorrow, thanks to some great suggestions from some of you gracious and awesome backers... we want this thing to be everything it can be and we are wide open to all feedback that will help us get there!

Thanks for being on this ride with us! Please spread the word and help us make this monumental!