FUNDED! Thank you so much!
over 5 years ago – Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 09:14:24 AM

This is Brie!

On behalf of the team and myself, I want to thank you all SO MUCH for making this project possible! Turn means a lot to me and we are all working hard to make it a reality in print. 

What's next?

I'm so glad you asked! We are still putting together the official update to reveal the bios and full descriptions for our first stretch goals, but I can share some brief details here!

For our first stretch goal, Anders Smith ($12k) will be exploring Mormon communities in the desert, and how the relationships and culture change a shifter's role in society.

For our second stretch goal, Ezio Melega and Lavinia Fantini ($14k) will be taking Turn around the globe to reveal the ways Italian small towns are unique, and uniquely stressful for shapeshifters!

We're so excited for these stretch goals (and future ones!), and can't wait to give you all of the details in the next update. 

International Shipping Has Arrived!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 11:24:45 AM

We have been working since before the Kickstarter to determine how to do international shipping, and we've had some success! We're going to be introducing two new options for international shipping!  

Shipping to the EU

Shipping $25.  

This option is being facilitated by Flavio Mortarino and Alexandra Zanasi, our business partners in Italy. We'll ship box(es) of books to Flavio after the Kickstarter, and Flavio will distribute from there. The shipping cost includes the local shipping from Flavio to EU backers, fair payment for Flavio & Alexandra, and the cost of shipping the original box(es) from the US to Italy. This agreement with Flavio is allowing us a slightly reduced cost for both backers and us.  

Shipping internationally outside of the US and EU 

Shipping $40.  

This option will be facilitated by John and Brie, shipping directly from the US to you as backers. We estimated a lot of various shipping costs and USPS is the best rate, and we've had good luck with USPS in Brie's fulfillment of Behind the Masc. This will ship to anywhere else, but because of the varying shipping costs, we had to set a high base shipping cost. Still, this means you'll get a hard copy shipped directly to you!  

We are exploring options for an add-on community copy using BackerKit, but still have to work out some details. For the Bison backer level, we'll currently only be shipping the community copy to the US or adding some copies to what we ship to Flavio, but Brie will keep exploring ways to ensure international community members are recognized.

Thank you all so much for your support and investment into Turn! We're so excited to make this real!  

Best,  

Brie (+the team!)

Week 1 Update: Wow! Update, Town Building, Art
over 5 years ago – Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 08:15:53 AM

Thank you so much to all of you for your continued support of Turn! This has been an impressive week. We’re nearly there!  

I’m Brie, the designer of Turn, and I wanted to do an update on what we’re doing, talk a little about some of Turn’s special qualities, and also share an art update! 

First, I want to let you know, we are investigating international shipping - we actually have been since before launching the project. It’s a complicated process, and we’re trying to figure out the best way to handle it. Keep an eye out for stretch goals when we fund - expanding the borders of Turn’s narrative will be a part of them, and we hope to include international shipping as well. 

Second, I wanted to talk about a G+ post by John W. Sheldon, who has done a lot of the early developmental editing work on Turn and who is our artist for the human roles, plus our video producer, layout artist, and half of Daedalum AP, through which Turn is publishing. John has been through the depths of Turn’s development with me, and has done a great job of putting some simpler, approachable thoughts together about the game. He recently made a post about town building, here, and I’d like to expand on it.

Town building was actually the first concrete design piece of Turn. I worked on it for ages. I did test maps for literally years (2013-2017), seeing what I liked best and what worked the most. They were partially inspired by the emotion maps I use for design, using words spaced out on a page to represent concepts. As John mentions, Turn’s maps are not a physical map - they’re a map of the town’s identity. While you can use the map’s structure to imply territories or relatedness, there’s no concrete physical structure, because the important part is how things relate conceptually. 

When you design a town in Turn, you do it before character creation, and before determining much of the setting structure. The town ends up feeling really organic as you add elements that are parts of both beast and human lives and discuss what things mean to each other, or leave these nice spaces to explore in play. It gives you a space to work in, without defining physical limitations too deeply. I love building towns because you discover so many things when you do it! And you build in secrets with every new element, as well. 

In the one-shot guide, I included a number of towns, many of which were built as part of playtests, but some I created particularly for the guide. It’s awesome to just build the towns sometimes! In no small part because when you build a town in Turn, you’re creating a new place that the shifters can call their own, but perhaps, that they might struggle to belong in. To me, that’s an excellent start. 

Third and finally, I wanted to share a piece of lovely art that we have for the book! John also wrote a post about the human roles, which is great, as he’s drawn The Overachiever. 

The art for the beasts and humans is very different on purpose, and should demonstrate some of the differentiation between their worlds. The Overachiever is very special to me, so I’m super excited to see it in ink - I hope you enjoy it too! 

Thank you all again so much for backing, sharing, and spreading the word - Turn is a dream for me, and you’re helping it come true. Until next time, don’t get too stressed out! 

Best, 

Brie

3/4 of the Way There!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Nov 05, 2018 at 09:03:37 AM

Hello and welcome to this lovely Fall Monday! US residents have (hopefully) adjusted to the time change and we've got 24-ish days left in this campaign.

Which brings me to the point of this update: we're 75% of the way to our funding goal!

How cool is that?

This is the home stretch for the first leg of this project. Obviously, the goal is to hit the funding target. However, we have some other goals waiting in the wings, with spectacular writers attached. We plan to announce those once we hit the first mark.

If you're on Twitter, please do us a favor and retweet this tweet: https://twitter.com/TheOtherTracy/status/1059489709796274177 and we'll see if we can't get funded soon!

Oh, and as a side note: I know the world seems like it's on fire right now. Tomorrow, in the US, you have a chance to make a difference. Please go out and vote in the midterm elections if you're able to do so. Then, as the days proceed from there, do what you can, as you're able, to reach out to those in need. It's getting colder and places like soup kitchen and homeless shelters are more in need during these months. Voting is vitally important and there are things you can do beyond that to keep helping your fellow humans. <3 

Hello 50%!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Nov 01, 2018 at 07:40:39 AM

Hello, you Walkers of Both Worlds, it's Tracy, Turn's editor and consultant.

As the east coast of the United States slept, we passed the 50% funding mark! It happened in less than 24 hours from the launch of funding, which is amazing. We've got some great momentum coming off this first day and we encourage you to keep spreading the word to keep that momentum going.

Also! If you want to take some time and see Brie talk about Turn and just how awesome it is, you can put your eyes and ears on this interview he did with Angel Garcia for Story Always.

We've got 30 more days of funding to go and some cool stuff planned when we pass the funded mark. Let's keep going!