Turn is a slice-of-life supernatural roleplaying game with quiet drama about shapeshifters in small, rural towns. Our Kickstarter funded at 207%, and we're on track to fulfill the core PDF content by March 2019 and the print content by May 2019. Find more details in our Kickstarter updates! Print orders are on hold while we complete our print run, after which we'll be available for print order on Indie Press Revolution!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Pre-Layout Draft Done, Beast Art Finals In, Stretch Goals Progressing!
about 5 years ago
– Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 01:24:33 AM
Hi friends!
I am so excited to tell you that we have TWO major milestones today, and we have one of five stretch goals ready for layout, too!
Milestone #1: Pre-Layout Draft Text Done
The final version of the rules before layout is at now uploaded into the Beta file, and it's VERY plaintext, but that's how it's going to be until we release the pdf (I may pop in to tidy up returns and all, but this is the free text). It's now heading to layout with John, along with everything else we have. We're super excited, this has been so much effort! Thanks to everyone who has supported me and to Tracy for their hard word.
This is the final art for the Turn game book for the beasts, one of many gorgeous pieces. We couldn't have been happier with Cecilia's prompt response, skill, or enthusiasm for the work! There are so many pieces I can't wait for you to see in the final product, but this one is one of my favorites, because beasts playing together is a wonderful thing to play out and worth every second - and Cecilia captured it perfectly!
Stretch Goals Progressing - 1/5 Edited, 4/5 in Progress!
We have one of the stretch goals, Harmouth, now in the final stages and ready for layout. We have two with portions or full content submitted, which will take me a bit to go through with editing, and then two further that are staged farther out to ease workflow. These aren't due to release for a while, but I wanted to let you know what was going on with them!
Reminder: Community Copies, Surveys, & Pre-orders!
Just a reminder to share the community copies application here with your marginalized friends and favorite libraries and community centers! These will be evaluated when we go to printing and I'll work to distribute them. Please do share with international recipients, because we are hoping that we can fund sending out at least a few copies that way.
Make sure to do your surveys! We're so close to 100%, I can taste it! Only 50 backers left to respond, which is honestly so great at this stage, so keep it up. :D
Please also consider sharing the pre-order link! We truly appreciate it.
Summary & Risks
We are doing great! John's finishing the human art and then will begin layout for the main book. I'll continue through working on the stretch goals, and seeing if we can manage some art for them, too (no promises!). I may be doing some layout work on the stretch goals with John's guidance to help ease the workload! I laid out Behind the Masc by myself and it turned out super great, and John will sign off on everything before it's official.
John and I have been juggling some health troubles over the past month - John with some persistent bug that will hopefully ease soon, and me with some recurring 8+day migraines that can be debilitating. Others on the team have encountered health trouble too, with cold season causing struggles. I'm still working every minute I'm able on my work here and my other responsibilities, and John works when he can outside of his day job. I know all of the stretch goal designers are putting their hearts into it, too!
I'm also trying to get additional treatment for my migraines so I can function better and more often. This may mean a couple more doctor appointments or shaky days. What does this mean to the project? It shouldn't mean much! I baked in a lot of time to our timeline to get done. When we get to shipping and printing though, it could hit hiccups - the printer we quoted with is reliable, though, and I've handled shipping before (with Behind the Masc). I just want y'all to be aware that we're monitoring our risks, and we're doing our best.
One piece to share before I go. Thank you all again so much for your continued support, your enthusiasm, and for giving Turn a chance.
Update on Art, Editing, Stretch Goals!!
about 5 years ago
– Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 11:46:15 PM
Hiya friends!
Just wanted to give you an update on what's happening!
Make sure to finish your surveys! We're doing pretty great - 91%! - but we gotta hit that 100% to get everything out to all of the backers. Check your emails! Check BackerKit! Thank you!
We still have the pre-order page going! It'll run up until we're ready to release the PDF, I think, and then we'll change to a regular store (looking at IPR, DriveThru, and potentially itch.io) - make sure to share the pre-order link! https://turn.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders << right here!
I just got edits back from Tracy which they say are the final edits before the layout proofread! I'll dig into them this week - I have some minor work to do to address the edits, plus I'm adding a sidebar on using chats to represent text messaging.
I finished up the dev edit for Harmouth, and I'll be doing the editorial review next. I saw Ezio & Lavinia's Italy work hit my inbox, so I'll be moving toward that as well for dev edits. Meguey & Anders will follow, and Gerrit is last to accommodate some life stuff!
Now that edits are finished I'll be starting to follow up with people on their unique backer levels, I just wanted to get this set of edits out of the way so I can be dedicated. We will be fulfilling these over the course of the next multiple months, so don't stress that we aren't immediately finalizing! For me, having all of the surveys collected makes it possible to address all of the backers, and we tried to get them out quickly to make this happen, so we're doing pretty good.
John's been working on the various human Role art pieces, and they look amazing! His Heir really captured what I was looking for in the piece, and I'm excited to see how he'll take on the next few pieces!
The Heir by John W. Sheldon, represented by a person in a motorbiking jacket who is holding keys and a helmet. Their hair is in dreadlocks, and the patch on their arm reads "...Family Racing."
We also have some artwork in from Cecilia, our new beast artist, and it looks so good! It's still in the pencils stage, but we wanted to show some previews so you could see the great work coming through! I've included the Snake and Bison, but have enthusiasm that there's so much more to come!
A Snake by Cecilia Ferri, represented by a snake wrapping around a rock to help scrape off shedding skin, and while doing so, changing from a rattlesnake into a different snake with a striped pattern down its back. This is demonstrating the Snake's main power in Turn!
A Bison by Cecilia Ferri, represented by a Bison standing near and staring at a broken wooden fence in a field, satisfied and chewing on some grass while a bird squats on a fencepost.
Keep in mind that the currently free beta of the game will stay alive until we release the PDF, then the document will get locked. I will likely update it one last time before it goes to layout soon to reflect Tracy's latest edits, and will take it down just before we make the PDF accessible to backers. I'm just letting you know in case you happen to be in the middle of a game and using the document!
When the game is released on PDF in March or for the hardcopy release in May, I'm totally interested in doing podcasts or interviews! Just message here! If you know someone who wants a review copy, have them message here or email contactbriecs at gmail dot com.
Some more about the stretch goals - we're going to include a completed map, an essay, beasts, humans, NPCs, and reskin information for how to rename the existing archetypes as necessary. I'm hoping to share some bits from Harmouth after the edits are done, just clips on here. I promise you we're working hard to make these happen, but it all takes time.
We are super grateful for everyone's continued support! I'm really proud of the work everyone is doing, and I think that the final product of the game will genuinely be worth your time. Remember I'm always here if you have questions! We're mostly just in the thick of the work, and I'm trying not to spam while also still trying to ensure that we focus as much on the design itself as we can. I think we're still on track for everything, so it's looking good! Thanks for sticking with us!
Best,
Brie & the team
Poetry in hand!
over 5 years ago
– Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 12:43:07 AM
Hello all,
We're working away on our various bits! Turn's core text is back with Tracy, and I'm currently reviewing Jaye's text while the others are working on theirs. We have some of the stretch goal work staggered over the spring so I have plenty of time to do developmental editing while I work on Turn and so on, and John will start layout once we're done with the main text edits from Tracy & me, plus when we get all the art in.
Speaking of art, we have all of the poems now! A.J. has done such absolutely masterful work on these pieces, I can't even begin to detail how perfect they are! This is why I hired them, because they can write things that capture themes and concepts that I don't even know how to ask for. I am not sharing them all today, but I wanted to share one of my favorites from the collection, What It Is, which will be placed before the Towns section in the main book.
Thank you so much to A.J. for this incredible work and for helping me make my dream come true in Turn.
--
What It Is by A.J. Odasso.
Raw text for screen readers - there is a break after "drop" and after "water":
What It Is
by A.J. Odasso
The town’s what it is because they’re in it,
because of the blueberries in the brush
that my grandfather planted one summer
before they took the fox and shot the thrush,
which ate my grandmother’s jam-making crop
off the brambles, because night on Summit
Street seethes with firefly-streaks above the drop
down to where my father swam the river
while they tamed the fox and named it
Lady, my uncle played jazz and shot pool
down the ditch that almost had his brother
when a deer crossed his path in the splendor
of the half-moon on my mother’s white face,
the babe she caught that night on the water
because the town’s what it is, what we are.
Welcome to our new beast artist, Cecilia Ferri!
over 5 years ago
– Sat, Jan 05, 2019 at 12:07:38 AM
Hi all!
We did a search for a new beast artist, and we found Cecilia Ferri through a submitted portfolio! Cecilia is an accomplished artist with a gorgeous style. It's a fair bit different from the original art style, but we think that it suits Turn perfectly and provides the game book with Cecilia's own flavorful artistic touch. The book itself is planned to be laid out like a journal, almost like someone learning themselves about shifters in Turn. We think Cecilia's style will be a change, but definitely a good one.
Cecilia Ferri (she/her) is an Italian illustrator graduated in Publishing Illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. In 2015, at the Children's Book Fair, she was one of the finalists of the Silent Book Contest. In 2017 she won the "Giorgio Morandi" etching prize and was selected for the Children's Book Fair in Bologna where she won the Ars in Fabula Grant Award, attending the Masters in Illustration "Ars in Fabula" in Macerata. The same year she published her first children's book, "Comignolo".
Happy new...beta?
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 01:25:41 AM
Hi all!
The Turn beta is updated with the latest version of the text. It includes the tags for headers and sidebars and all because it was simply easier to include them and ensure it gave proper context for any of those things in the document. Sorry if the formatting is a little yikes - we'll keep at it. Feel free to provide comments, but know that it's getting emailed to Tracy for edits in the next five minutes so any changes will be addressed in the next round.
I also wanted to update you - we found an artist! We're just not announcing anything until we have a signed contract. When we do, I'll post their bio and information here! The choice for art has been a slight shift in how the book will be presented, but it ended up being truer to the heart of what I wanted for the design anyway. I hope you all love it when you see it!
One final thing: Thank you all SO MUCH for your support and enthusiasm for this project. It is a lot of hard work and your love for Turn has helped me keep going on days when things are not going so well. It's an amazing game, and you are all so awesome for helping make it happen!
