February Update and Designer Diary
about 4 years ago – Tue, Mar 01, 2022 at 01:18:49 AM

Hi Everyone!

February has come to an end, and here in southeastern Minnesota that means the long tease between winter and spring has begun: warm days and melting snow punctuated by occasional snow storms and sub-zero temperatures. Today, the sun is out, and the snow is melting, and it’s almost as if I could will the trees into bloom through sheer force of will.

The biggest news this month is the arrival of the first test-casts for the reclaimed pewter Ranger miniatures add-on; the first physical objects from a manufacturer in Earthborne’s history! Overall, I’m extremely happy with them. We’ll be revising them a little yet, but they’re very close to final. I’m really digging the fine detail in the clothing and gear, the simplicity of their demeanor, and their realistic proportions. I appreciate that they’re very different from the bombastic, over-the-top plastic minis that have become a staple of the hobby, and they’re a great interpretation of Evan’s original designs.

 Core game development is going very well. Fischer will elaborate on it in his designer diary, but we’re in the midst of the second wave of post-Kickstarter testing, and it’s been great. The feedback from testers has been excellent. I’ve also enjoyed playing the campaign myself, but I’ll talk about that in more detail during the next episode of the Earthborne Games Podcast later this week.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the podcast, I encourage you to do so! It’s the best way to keep up to date with the project and to hear in-depth discussions about development, art, world building, and other related topics.

That’s all for this month! I wish you all the best, wherever you may be.

Much love,

Andrew

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Designer Diary - 2/22/22

Hello Rangers!

It’s been a while since my last designer diary with you all. Now that we’ve started recording the Earthborne Games Podcast every other week, I’ve been trying to give some of my design updates and insights there, so make sure to check it out if you haven’t already. Also, if you want sneak peaks at some of the in-development cards, I’ve been sneaking one or two onto the fan Discord server each week. But this month in particular has been very busy, so it felt like it could warrant an update here as well.

Earlier this month we started 'wave two' of post-KS testing! Our first wave of testing focussed on making sure the starting ranger cards and terrain sets were fun and functional to establish our foundation. This wave, then, is adding to this foundation with the missions, landmarks, and reward cards - the content that builds out our open world and tells the story of the campaign. The open world is what I wanted to talk about today, as well as some of the high-level questions that are facing us at this stage in development.

Mission Structure

There are two types of missions in Earthborne Rangers. The first are side missions that you can discover out in the world. These missions take a session or two to complete and their stories usually stand on their own. They contain choices that may make permanent changes to the Valley or impact other parts of the game, but their narratives are self-contained, and have a satisfying ending at the conclusion of the mission.

The other kind are missions that contribute to the main story. These missions are part of a larger plotline and chain together, with one mission leading to the next as your choices in earlier missions change the course of the story. In the diagram below (that I’ve kept zoomed out to avoid spoilers), you can see the story missions interconnected on the left, while the side missions are each in their own small tree on the right.

These two types of missions highlight a dichotomy that is present in most open world games that also have narratives. On one hand, the open world offers the promise of freedom, exploration, and freeform gameplay. On the other hand, a strong narrative wants to have direction, stakes, and urgency. These can often feel diametrically opposed as I’m sure you know if, like me, you have ever ignored a seemingly urgent main story quest in a video game for weeks while you finished every single side quest.

Freedom vs. Direction in Earthborne Rangers

This dichotomy of freedom vs. direction is something that has been on my mind a lot as we’ve begun this new wave of testing for Earthborne Rangers. In the first draft of the story missions, the plotline chained together one mission into another. It felt urgent and engaging. Each time a mission was completed the story advanced and the rangers were given another interesting task to pursue. However, it left the players feeling like they had no time to explore the Valley or wander off of the beaten path.

The second draft of missions went too far in the other direction. It would give out a couple story missions, but then would break for downtime at certain parts of the story to give players time to explore. This definitely gave more freedom to players, but certain groups reported feeling confused or a bit directionless with the lack of explicit pointers on where to go next.

Ultimately, our goal is a balance between these two, where the main plotline feels engaging and urgent at times, but there are breaks in-between to give you a chance to do things like hunt one of the Valley’s mega-predators or help Hy Pimpot cook the best pot of stew the Valley has ever tasted.

Our third approach to this is to keep a constant chain of main story missions, but to carefully vary their urgency so that players always have a pointer on where to go next, but also feel like they have moments to take a breath and explore. Between our more urgent missions, you will get the “Journey” mission, which tells you the next location to which you’ll have to travel to continue the main story, but will give you some time to get there. The hope is to intersperse these two types of experiences to create an escalating interest curve over the course of the campaign. Trying to create and tune this experience is the focus of wave two of testing.

Before I sign off, I want to extend a special ‘thank you’ to all of our testers, both in this wave and the first. It has been incredibly rewarding to work with other people passionate about the game and get their feedback and suggestions to make it the best experience it can be. We couldn’t make this game without you! Thank you!

Until next time,

Andrew (Fischer)

January Update
about 4 years ago – Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 07:28:14 PM

Hi Everyone!

I hope you’re all doing well.

Work on Earthborne Rangers continues! Fischer and Brooks have put a ton of work into the card designs in the last few months, and we’re starting up the next round of playtesting this week.

In our first round of post-Kickstarter testing, we focused on the basics: the starting Ranger card pool, the terrain sets, and the location cards, so as to create a solid foundation upon which we could build. If you haven’t done so already, you can check out Andrew Fischer’s recent appearance on Shelf Stories with Jason Perez where he talks in great detail about the playtesting and iteration we’ve done so far.

For the next round of testing, we’ve implemented a lot of changes to the card pool based on tester feedback as well as our own experience with the game. We’ll also be introducing the cards from the Valley set (the people, features, and animals that you can encounter anywhere in the Valley), the Landmark cards for each pivotal location (the people, features, and animals specific to those locations), and the reward cards (the cards you’ll get for completing missions great and small).

That also means that we’ll be testing the core set campaign in this round of testing, which is very exciting. Over the holiday break, I played through the first half of the campaign solo using stand-in missions, no landmark cards, and making a lot of stuff up as I went along, and it was still a lot of fun. I know that playing with NPCs, apex predators, and actual missions is going to be even better, so I can’t wait to dive in.

We’re also making good progress on the 300-odd card illustrations for the core set. As of this writing we’ve completed 40 illustrations. We still have a ways to go, but we’ve picked up the pace over the past month or so and have begun working with several artists whose work we're very excited about. Evan has been hard at work not only illustrating pieces himself, but in commissioning artists who we feel match our vision for EBR (as evidenced by the header image for this update). I will be sure to continue to share the fruits of those labors with you all in the months ahead.

As for me, when I’m not offering feedback and direction, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on all the things that go into running a small publishing business. The mundane and the beautiful. Backer support, communicating with manufacturers, tax preparation (which I’m behind on), and creative work whenever I can squeeze it in. Which leads me to the following:

Credit Card Issues with Some European Banks

Everyone’s favorite topic: Banking! A few backers have reached out in recent weeks regarding issues they’ve had with their credit cards being declined when they try to complete their order in BackerKit–not because of lack of funds or an expired card–but for seemingly unknown reasons with little to no explanation.

After several days of reading online help documentation and communicating with support at both Stripe (the company that processes our credit card payments) and BackerKit, I’ve surmised (that is, I've made an educated guess) that this is likely happening because of changes to Strong Customer Authentication requirements in Europe that went into effect at the start of the year. BackerKit is doing everything they can to solve this issue as quickly as possible, but if you find yourself in this situation, please either contact BackerKit support, send us a DM on Kickstarter, or send us an email to [email protected] to let us know.

The Earthborne Games Podcast

We’ve started a podcast! We posted our pilot episode on Friday, and we’ll be releasing new episodes every other week. In each episode we’ll talk about Earthborne Rangers development, our creative process, playtesting, manufacturing, games we’re playing, and the things that inspire us. Our hope is that the podcast will give you tremendous insight into the game, and into who we are as people. And, hopefully, you’ll be entertained along the way!

Currently, you can find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

That’s all I have for now. As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or just want to say hi, please feel free to reach out.

See you all next month!

Much love,

Andrew

The Pledge Manager is Live!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 06:51:47 PM

Hi everyone!

I hope you're all doing well.

The pledge manager for Earthborne Rangers is now live! If you have not received your survey from BackerKit, please be sure to check your spam folder.

The deadline to complete your survey is April 2022, so there is no great rush. When you complete your survey, your credit card will be charged, so please plan accordingly and complete your order when it best suits you.

You’ll also see a couple of changes once you’re in there:

1) We’ve shifted the projected fulfillment date from July to September of 2022. This is due primarily to the pace at which we feel we’ll be able to complete the localization and the artwork for the core set.

2) The Legacy of the Ancestors campaign expansion will ship separately from the rest, in early 2023. We do not have a firm date set, but again, localization and artwork will take time, and we don’t want to delay fulfillment of the core set and everything else just so we could ship with the campaign expansion at the same time.

3) The deluxe energy tokens are now wood instead of bioplastic. Many of you were asking for this change during the campaign, and it is now official.

In the months since the conclusion of the Kickstarter campaign, I worked with a great group of students at the University of Illinois who researched a lot of information for us regarding the material components for the game. One of the many things I learned from our bi-weekly meetings was how bioplastic stacks up to wood in terms of its environmental impact. While the students were unable to find data directly comparing the two materials, they uncovered enough information for me to change direction and go with wood instead. Bioplastic tokens require more energy to produce than wood components, the biodegradability of wood is far superior to bioplastics, and while bioplastics may be recycled or composted, the post-consumer waste industry at large is not well equipped to do so.
We’ve also been playing with wood tokens in our playtesting, and the tactile feel of the wood tokens as you play feels perfect.
The price for the tokens is now $15 instead of $30. One set includes enough energy tokens for one player.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to [email protected] or DM us on Kickstarter.

Thank you one and all for your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you!

Stay safe, stay warm, stay healthy, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Much love,

Andrew

November Update & Designer Diary
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 04:41:46 PM

Hi Everyone!

I hope you're all doing well, wherever you may be.

November was a very full month for us. Apart from taking time out to spend with our friends and family during the Thanksgiving holiday, we were hard at work preparing for (and launching) the first round of external playtesting for EBR since last winter. We’re currently testing deck building, the eight core set terrain types, and early drafts of each of the Valley’s locations. These cards form the foundation of the Earthborne Rangers experience, so we want to ensure that they function well on their own before we introduce the narrative campaign, mission cards, and reward cards to testers. We’ve already received a lot of valuable feedback, and I’m very grateful for the time and energy the testers are putting in to help make EBR the best experience it can be. This round of testing will continue through December and conclude in early January.

An additional benefit to starting up external playtesting again is that I have been able to play a lot over this past month, both on Tabletop Simulator and with a physical prototype. I spent most of the long weekend playing at my kitchen table--building decks and putting the cards through their paces. Even without the campaign steering the story, the game continues to show its strength by creating emergent narrative and memorable moments. I begrudgingly handed off the prototype to Fischer yesterday, so he could do some testing of his own, but I just want to keep playing!

In preparation for the *next* round of testing, Sam Gregor-Stewart has crafted detailed backstories and motivations for the Valley's many NPCs, so that when you interact with them throughout the course of the narrative they’ll be engaging and interesting enough to draw you into their personal stories as you get swept up in the challenges facing the Valley. He’s then going to use those write-ups in conjunction with our detailed setting documents to write the first draft of the campaign guide, which will see testing this winter.

As always, I find Sam’s writing to be incredibly inspiring. He’s phenomenal at simply getting words down on paper (or rather, in a Google doc). Personally, I find writing first drafts to be very difficult, so having a prolific writer like Sam on board to take that first swing is a blessing. As with design, we iterate and edit a lot-- ultimately arriving at very cool ideas that are stronger for the collaborative effort we put into the process.

In other news (in what I hope will be the final pledge manager update before the launch), I’m happy to report that the pledge manager is nearly ready to go. Everything is set up on the backend--we just need to review it with the fine folks at BackerKit, then we’ll be set. I’m very much looking forward to checking it off of my ever-expanding to-do list.

Lastly, I want to be sure to mention the continued progress we’ve made on the artwork since the last update. Evan and Joe continue to create amazing work together, and we’re on the precipice of bringing on board a handful of additional talented artists whose work you’ll get to see beginning early next year. Earthborne Rangers is steadily coming to life, and I’m thankful each and every day for the opportunity you all have given us to make our vision a reality. Thank you!

Until next update!

Much love,

Andrew

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Designer Diary (November) - The Shape of Development

In last month’s designer diary, I talked a bit about our planning process for the massive amount of cards in the core set of Earthborne Rangers. Starting this month, I wanted to share how we actually went about developing these cards for the current version of the game, and give you a glimpse into some of our successes and failures during that process.

These stages of design can often be very messy. We are constantly inventing, testing, and reinventing cards, and a lot of different ideas are thrown around that won’t make it into the final game. The goal is to rapidly test a large number of card concepts to figure out what abilities feel right--not to craft perfect wording or templating for each and every card. Card content can change a lot during this phase, and it can be difficult to coordinate with a team of multiple designers.

To help give a bit of organization to this process, we had different designers on our team take charge of different categories of cards. Adam and Brady Sadler, as the designers of the game system, took charge of the ranger cards. Brooks Flugaur-Leavitt, who has a lot of experience making thematic “top-down” designs for games like Star Wars: X-Wing took on the path cards that make up the bulk of the Valley. Finally, since I’ve been the central point of contact coordinating the team, I took on the mission cards and campaign guide structure that ties the whole game together.

With this month’s designer diary, I wanted to zoom in a bit on Sadlers’ work on the ranger cards and share some of the trial and error that went into the process.

Of all of the game content, the ranger cards were probably the furthest along heading into this current version of the game. They have changed the least of any game component version-to-version, as we needed to already have a good number of them designed before bringing EBR to Kickstarter.

That being said, there was still a large amount of design work to be done to fill in the gaps still remaining in each of our ranger card sets. Additionally, some of our trickiest designs - such as the rules-bending Shaper specialization - had been saved for last.

In the setting, Shapers are individuals who, with the help of a device called a conduit, are able to manipulate the fabric of reality. Because of this, we wanted to give them the ability to affect parts of the game that no other Rangers can. We also wanted them to have potent, splashy effects more powerful than a normal ranger card. As you can imagine, this core concept posed some challenges.

The main challenge didn’t actually come from designing the effects of these abilities, but from trying to balance their cost. To offset the extra power of these potent abilities - called “manifestations” - we gave them an extra cost beyond just energy. Shapers need to use special pieces of gear called “conduits” to play these manifestation cards. In setting, these represent pieces of technology that help focus the Shaper’s power. In game, they allow us to attach an extra cost to help balance out the potent effects of these cards.

The initial design for conduits required the Shaper to exhaust a conduit to play a manifestation. Simple, straightforward, but it had some downsides in testing:

• First, the strict requirement of a conduit meant that if a Shaper didn’t have a conduit in their opening hand, a lot of their deck was useless.
• Second, while it was an initial tax of energy to play the conduit, after that first round, it only limited how many manifestations could be played, not how much they cost.
• Third, only being able to play one manifestation per turn limited the cool combos and synergistic gameplay we were looking for from the Shaper.

It was clear we needed to take another stab at them. The next design that Brady cooked up for conduits took them in a completely different direction. Instead of having a single conduit, the shaper had access to multiple conduit cards. Each manifestation then scaled based on how many different conduits were exhausted to play it. This solved all three above issues, but created some new ones:

• First, this started to drift away from our intended theme for the shapers. Having a single conduit that the Shaper masters was important to how we conceptualized them in the setting.
• Second, the number of different cards required to make this work was just too great. A Ranger only gets 2 copies each of 5 different cards from their specialization, so Shapers just weren’t able to get enough of both manifestations and conduits to make their engine work.

Each of these above versions went through several iterations, but they eventually led us to settle on an implementation of the Shaper that has been working really well. In this version, a Shaper can only choose one conduit from four options. Each one has tokens on it that are generated in ways unique to that conduit. These tokens can be spent to play manifestations, so they can be saved up, or spent as you earn them. Finally, each conduit has a special keyword that allows the Shaper to search their deck at the start of the day and put one into play, representing their special affinity with this item.

We are still testing and working on the balance of each individual conduit and their interactions with the different Shaper roles, but this overall direction for the specialization has given us the design space and tools we need to make them feel powerful and thematically-appropriate.

This is just a glimpse into some of the iterations that went into a single set of the ranger cards. As you can imagine, many of our other sets underwent similar changes and redesigns as we’ve been working to fill them out.

Next month, I’ll dive into the work that Brooks has been putting into our path cards and talk about our work with some of the playtester teams to make traveling throughout the Valley the best experience possible.

Until next time!

Andrew (Fischer)

October Update & Designer Diary
over 4 years ago – Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 12:57:32 AM

Hi everyone!

I hope this update finds you well, wherever you may be.

Fall has officially arrived here in Minnesota, so that means I’m now wearing sweaters and wool-lined slippers on a daily whereas mere weeks before I was wearing t-shirts and sandals. It also means that I’ve been spending plenty of time indoors, warming myself by the light of my laptop, watching Earthborne Rangers steadily come to life.

Pledge Manager Update

Shortly after I posted last month’s update, we received confirmation from Backerkit that we will be able to charge shipping separately from your product order. That means that we can safely launch the pledge manager before we settle on shipping costs (which is exciting since the current cost of shipping is quite high).

Now, the only thing standing in the way of the pledge manager opening is my desire to improve the product imagery so that it can make the best possible impression.

Evan is currently working on a new graphical treatment for the Legacy of the Ancestors box that we’re extremely excited about. Plus, we're working on near-to-final visuals for the fold-out Valley map and the Art & Lore Book (among some other fun surprises).

If you’re champing at the bit to explore the pledge manager, rest assured that it will be worth the wait. We’ll get it up and running as soon as everything is living up to our (possibly unreasonable) expectations, and it will remain open for several months thereafter.

Sustainability Update

I recently received an updated quote for the core set, and I was happy to see that material prices have held steady since the previous quote. There are now giant asterisks all over it, however, warning us that “Due to the volatility of the market, stock [paper] and chip [puchboard] pricing may need to be adjusted.” As you might imagine, that wasn’t the most comforting thing to read given the fact that the entirety of the core set is made of paper. The warning is due to the supply chain issues that are currently plaguing the manufacturing of all things, but since we’re not on the verge of printing, the situation may improve by the time we’re ready to go to press.

On the bright side, we’re very close to having a fully FSC-compliant product, which is very exciting. Plus, the entire game as quoted should be both fully recyclable and compostable, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

With that, I’ll hand the update off to Andrew Fischer for this month's designer diary. Enjoy!

See you next month!

Much love,

Andrew

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Designer Diary (October) - Planning our Route

At the end of September I went on a multi-day backpacking trip to catch the fall colors on the Superior Hiking Trail, a 300+ mile footpath that follows the shore of Lake Superior.

Even though the Superior Hiking Trail is fairly linear, I still had to carefully plan my route before I left and ask myself some important questions. How much distance/elevation change do I think I can cover each day? Where are the good campsites and water sources? How much food will I need? Where are the fire bans, detours, or bridges out? What spurs or overlooks should I account for?

Having this plan doesn’t mean I was “on-rails” for the entire trip. In fact, I made a lot of changes as I went: I shortened the first day after pulling my calf a bit, I forded a river a mile early based on a tip from other hikers, and I climbed to a couple of bonus overlooks when I found myself with extra time later in the trip. I still had the freedom to improvise and do what I wanted, but my route planning gave me the context and information to better understand the decisions I had to make. I could better see the opportunities and pitfalls of my decisions because of how they altered and evolved the original plan.

Designing a big game like Earthborne Rangers is a lot like planning one of these hikes. As a team, we need a comprehensive plan and vision for what the entire game looks like, but we also need the flexibility to be able to iterate on the design. We need a plan that is specific enough to give context to our decision making, but broad enough to leave room for creativity and improvisation. So, for this month’s update, I wanted to share a couple pieces of what that planning looks like for our team. (And remember, all of this is subject to change as we continue to iterate on the game.)

Mapping the Valley

As an “open-world” game, everything in Earthborne Rangers is given context through its location in the Valley. Because of this, I wanted to make sure we were thinking about each location and character through the lens of where you would be encountering them.

To this end, we’ve made an Indesign document of the Valley map that we can use for reference and collaboration. Each location has its name, summary, and a list of landmark cards on separate layers that can be shown or hidden as needed. Also, each path is a vector object that can be edited with a click, allowing us to quickly move things around or change terrain types based on playtesting.

This map was sketched out based on Andrew and Sam’s world-building work and writing about the locations of the Valley. Then, based on the needs of the game’s design and story flow, some locations and characters were tweaked or moved around, which Sam then folded back into our world-building documents. Similarly, as Brooks continues the design of path cards, certain mechanics inform how we want the path layout to be structured. You can see how this kind of documentation can become critical with even just a few people simultaneously collaborating on an element of the game.

Storylines

The other planning document I thought would be cool to share with you all is our flowchart for the core set’s main story line. A lot of our “side-activities” and stories can be encountered in any order, and thus can be developed in a relative vacuum. However, the main storyline of our campaign has several dependencies to ensure that any branching or interactive narrative sections respond correctly to your actions.

To keep all of this in order, I’ve created a flowchart mapping out the mission structure of our campaign. Each major story beat is represented by a visualization of the number of cards those missions’ mechanics will use, a summary of the story beats we want to hit, and a quick note on which NPCs will play a role in those missions. This doesn’t capture all of the complexity of how missions work, however – each “node” on this flowchart may have multiple missions within it, and there are a lot of small outcomes that are tracked using the journal entries – but it does give a good high-level view of the narrative structure.

One of the other interesting elements of this chart is how it helps us pace the game. Each horizontal “row” in this image represents a section of a players’ time with the game, and each has an area of the map associated with it. Using this, we can match the pacing of the story to the physical space of the Valley, helping us get an optimal flow of content for the average playthrough of the campaign. This ensures that you have a good number of missions at any given time and that you flow naturally through the Valley, hopefully avoiding ever feeling dead-ended or like you’re backtracking. Obviously, some enterprising players will try to sequence-break this “optimal” flow, but that’s the fun of open-world games!

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I hope this glimpse into some of our planning documentation gets you as excited to finally venture into the Valley as I am to share it with you! In a few short weeks we will be starting our first round of external playtesting on some of this content. In next month’s update I hope to be able to share some of our designs and talk about where our planning held true and where we needed to improvise.

Until next time!

--Andrew (Fischer)