The Electrum Archive - Issue 02

IMPORTANT: Shipping and wrapping up the BackerKit
4 days ago – Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 02:39:18 AM

IMPORTANT: This is for the handful of people that haven't filled in their shipping/payment details in the BackerKit or whose cards have been declined and have not messaged me about it: please message me if you still want to receive your pledge. I will be forfeiting and refunding these orders on August 1st to be able to wrap up this project.

Fulfillment

I've spent a lot of time this month getting the zines ready to ship out to the fulfillment partners. My partner and I took a few days to tuck all the maps between the zines and packing them into sturdy cardboard boxes for shipping overseas.

I'm happy to report that by now most shipments (the UK and Canada shipments are still in transit) have arrived at the local fulfillment centers! It will take some time to get them all counted and prepped, but shipping to individual backers should be ready to start in August!

Good news for Australian backers! The shipment to down under arrived a lot quicker than the others, and the amazing folks at Indie RPG Bookshelf who manage the fulfillment there have already sent out all the packages to backers! So if you're living in that part of the globe, keep an eye on your mailbox :)

What's next?

I'm going to keep an eye on fulfillment over the next month to make sure everything goes well, and that all backers get their physical rewards. Besides that, after a short break to recharge, I'll be starting on some of the remaining stretch goals. I'll be making some art myself and bringing on some other artists to work on the portrait packs and pre-generated character sheets. The pace for these stretch goals will be a lot slower as I will divide my attention between them and the next project I'm working on.

To give you a taste of the portrait pack here are the two character portraits drawn by the wonderful Evlyn Moreau:

As for my other project, I will be working on the expanded edition of my dungeon game DURF. I have been slowly tinkering with DURF: Expanded for a long time already over on my Patreon, but wrapping up TEA 02 makes it so I can finally put all my weight behind it :)

And of course I'll be working on The Electrum Archive - Issue 03, which will cover the Sunless Princedoms hiding beneath the surface of Orn. Ava and I are considering doing a half issue in between, containing some of the things we couldn't fit in this last one and won't thematically fit into issue 03, but we'll see what form this will take while we're working on it :)

If you want to stay in the loop on what's going on with these projects (or just would like to hear my thoughts on the books I read and games I played each month), consider checking out my newsletter Lizard Mail! It is the best way to know what I'm up to in this age of decaying social media. A new letter going over my June and July will go out a little after I post this update.

Again, thank you so much for your support over the last year and a half!

That's all for now! Stay safe and take care :)

-Emiel

June Update - Charging Cards and Locking Addresses
about 1 month ago – Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 12:45:12 AM

All 3000+ zines have been printed! They look awesome and I'm planning to ship them to fulfillment partners over the next month.

IMPORTANT: I will start charging cards in BackerKit on July 1st! Shipping addresses will lock 48 hours after that, so make sure your payment info and shipping address are up-to-date in the BackerKit before then. If you run into any trouble, feel free to shoot me a message and I'll help out!

Again, thank you all for supporting this project! I will update you when each region starts shipping out :)

Cheers,

-Emiel

May Update - Locking Orders and Printing
about 2 months ago – Wed, May 29, 2024 at 04:41:07 AM

We spent the last weeks going over the digital files again and filtering out all the typos and inconsistencies we could find to make the zines ready for print. 

Last Friday, I picked up the proofs for both the issue 01 reprint and the new second zine, and they both look great!

Printing will take all of June, so I expect to start shipping out the zines in July :)

Locking orders & Shipping

To make sure we're printing the right amount of zines, we're going to lock the orders in BackerKit in 48 hours. So if you need to change anything about your order, you should do so now (shipping addresses and payment info can still be changed later and I'll update you again before those lock down).

Even if you don't change anything about your order, it is worth noting that the shipping prices have now been added to the BackerKit. They weren't there before, since at the start of this project it would have been hard to give you accurate estimations of how prices would fluctuate. The prices are slightly higher (one or two euros for most regions) than the estimates given on the campaign page in February 2023. This is due to shipping prices going up everywhere in the last 16 months, and some of the fulfillment partners I planned on working with no longer existing. The good news is that I have found a fulfillment partner in Australia, so the backers from down under actually have a better deal now!

So here is a breakdown of the new shipping costs, which should already be automatically applied to your BackerKit order:

• The Netherlands: €5
• EU: €10
• UK: €8,50 (~7,20 GBP)
• USA: €9,50 (~10,30 USD)
• Canada: €11 (~16,30 CAD)
• Australia: €9 (~14,70 AUD)
• Rest of World: €12,50 (~13,50 USD)

Digital PDFs

With the zine going to print, the digital version is finished. Download keys for it on itch.io can now be found among your digital downloads on BackerKit!

I'd like to clarify that issue 01 isn't available on BackerKit, but was distributed directly through itch.io. I sent all issue 01 backers a key for it last year after the KS campaign ended (before the BackerKit was live), so that one should be in your email inbox. If not, let me know and I'll get you a new key!

That's all for this month!

Enjoy and stay safe!

-Emiel

April Update - PDF Finished!
3 months ago – Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 05:58:00 AM

Hey!

The PDF of the zine is done! If everything went right, you should already have an email from BackerKit giving you access to a new download!

Ava and I (and our amazing proofreaders) worked hard this month to get it the zine finished, and I'm really proud of how it turned out!

So go grab the PDF from the BackerKit to dive into this second issue! If you have any trouble accessing it, please let me know.

In addition to finishing the PDF of issue 02, we also overhauled the travel procedure found in TEA 01 and fixed a bunch of typos there as well. Version 1.4 of that zine is now up on itch, so make sure to download that one as well, to have all the up-to-date rules going into issue 02 :)

What's Next

There are still some typos to be filtered out before sending it off to be printed and the release on itch.io, so I expect the coming weeks to mostly focus on that. Besides fixing typos I will be getting ready to print and ship this zine. I visited the printer last week, and he is excited to work on this project again after doing a small print run in 2022. So I hope to have more details about the physical copies in next month's update.

But for now, please enjoy the PDF! I'm very excited to hear what you think of it :)

March Update
4 months ago – Thu, Mar 28, 2024 at 02:43:00 AM

All art for the zine has been completed! The last few pieces I commissioned for the heist adventure have come in and are looking great :) Here is a sneak peek at some of them:

With all the art done, the layout and editing work steadily continues. The largest part of the editing work has been finished, with only the factions and city sections remaining, which should not take too long to finish, after which it will mostly just be small edits and typo hunting. As for layout, I have done a rough layout for the whole zine. It is really cool to finally see everything we've worked on for so long come together in a single document! I'll keep refining this over the next month as more editing gets finished, but here is an overview screenshot of all 80 pages:

It feels great to be so close to finishing it and getting it into your hands :D We'll keep on steadily working on it over the next month!

Thank you so much for your support!

Talk again soon!

- Emiel