Category Archives: geeking out

Published: November 16, 2023

Bookstores, Updates, Surprises, and One Last Chance….

As I sit down to write this, the new book has been out for a full day and some change.

Launch day went pretty well. It felt… odd. For my last two books, I did signing tours. And while I don’t miss the thought of spending my time in airports and hotel rooms… I do miss the thought of getting to meet a lot of you. Tours are exhausting. But the one part I never got tired of was meeting you guys…

But various things made a tour impractical for me this time around. So when my book came out and it felt a little… different. Not unpleasant, just not as eventful as if I met up with 500-600 of you in Seattle…

That isn’t to say it was a bad day. I fit it what promotion I could while helping the boys with their homework and otherwise dadding it up. I even took a brief field trip with my kiddos to the local bookstore.

(I *really* should have straightened out those books before taking this picture. It’s bothering me…)

Oh! Speaking of which, let’s take a moment to enjoy some good news in a world that’s… well… let’s just say not as good as I think it should be.

After years of being bookstore-less, Stevens Point (the town where I live) has not just one, but TWO local bookstores.

Point’s last bookstore closed *years* ago. It was deeply depressing, as I knew deep in my heart that this town would never have another unless I personally intervened in some way to make it happen….

…Fast forward to my delight at being proven wrong. A couple years back, some amazing local folk opened Bound to Happen books. A local bookstore right on main street. The fact that they survived their first couple years AND covid warms my bitter old heart.

I stopped by to enjoy the book birthday with my boys. Not only did the store have a Draccus pushie on the front counter and the promotional postcards to give away, they had this:

Unknown to me, they’d collaborated with Worldbuilders Market to have some a whole shelf of Kingkiller-related stuff for people who might be showing up for the new book. I had no idea that was happening, and it made me look *very* cool in front of my kids.

Unfortunately, the boys and I were a little rushed, so I didn’t have time to take pictures of the other, even newer, bookstore: Sojourn Booksellers. But picture or no, I’d feel bad not giving them a mention too. They have some of my books as well…

Aaand since I’m splashing around local bookstore love, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout to A Room of One’s Own down in Madison. They sent me a picture of displaying not just the new book, but the sexy Bast calendar, too…

Which brings me to my next piece of good news.

  • Calendars are back from the printer.

In fact, I’m guessing a few of you have already gotten yours in the mail if you pre-ordered them from Worldbuilders, or got them in one of the bundles.

The boys think it’s the funniest thing ever, and wanted to show off their favorite Bast pictures:

(Oot had trouble deciding, so he picked two.)

Launch day wrapped up with a lovely stream with Nate where we got to show off the art and celebrate the book finally being out. If you missed it, you can see the archived video over on my twitch channel.

For those of you who aren’t into streaming, there’s one thing Nate and I announced that I want to let you know about here…

  • Surprise! Extra Signed Books (Feat Nate Taylor)

As I’ve already mentioned in a bunch of places, the publisher and I worked hard so those of you who pre-ordered books could get signed copies. I signed a *lot* of books. A very lot. Enough so that you could get them from your local bookstore, or B&N, or Books-A-Million… pretty much anywhere.

You could also pre-order it over at Worldbuilders Market, the online store for my charity. If you did, you could get the same promotional postcard and signed book.

We really appreciate y’all who support the charity, and we know you can buy the book online for a discount, so we wanted to do something a little extra for you who were willing to pay a little more to help make the world a better place.

So… a month or so ago, Amazing Illustrator (and even better friend) Nate Taylor flew out here to Stevens Point. Partly to visit, but also to sign some books.

What this means is that if you pre-ordered a copy of Narrow Road from Worldbuilders Market, you got a book that was signed by me AND Nate.

And not to put to fine a point on it, but there were a *lot* of you:

It’s hard to show you how many packages they got ready in the weeks leading up to the book’s launch…

Because there were too many to get a picture of all at once…

All told, they shipped over 2200 packages on the Monday before publication so y’all could get your books as quickly as possible.

(Child shown for scale. I swear our employees are of legal age.)

What’s more, on publication day, y’all came storming into the store again. And then yesterday too.

At times like this, I’ve asked them to focus on getting people’s packages shipped out as quickly as possible. And they’ve been doing a bang-up job. But since they’re focusing on that, we haven’t had time to switch our two big pre-order items over into the NON pre-order versions yet.

So… congratulations! All y’all who ordered books, calendars, or bundles over the last couple days still managed to get the lower prices and the double-signed books too!

The team says they’ll be getting items switched over as soon as they’re caught up with shipping tomorrow. If you manage to order a Signed Copy of Narrow Road, or any of the bundles containing Narrow Road before they change it, you’ll still get:

  • The lower pre-order price.
  • A copy of the book signed by me AND Nate.
  • One of the promo postcards.

(So long as we don’t run out, of course.)

So if that sounds like something you’re interested in, or if you’re just looking to do some holiday shopping, jump in quick. Because they tell me the pre-order items and prices will definitely be going away by the end of tomorrow.

Oof. There’s more news to share, but this blog is already crazy long.

I’ll post the rest up in a day or so, folks. For now? I rest…

Thanks again for being amazing…

pat

 

Also posted in cool news | By Pat25 Responses
Published: June 8, 2022

Playing Fiasco With Polygon

In an attempt to work through my vasty backlog of half-finished blogs. I’m going to be posting up a few little short ones here and there.

It’s wild to me when I stop to think that back in the day, I used to post up blogs at the rate of 2-3 a week, whereas now it’s more usual for me to post one every 2-3 months.

Though to be fair, a lot was different back then. It was before I had two kids, back before I was trying to run a charity (as opposed to sometimes just running a fundraiser, which is a big difference.) Back in the beforetimes of covid…

Anyway, one of the things I regret leaving by the wayside is posting up blogs of stuff I’d done that you could access online. That way even folks who didn’t go to a convention could watch the panels I was on. Or even people who don’t subscribe to it, could hear me guest star onto a podcast, or catch me do a writing Q&A or play D&D or some other sort of game.

I feel like over the last 4-5 years, I haven’t shared more than 10% of the stuff here that’s available online.

Like, (Pat said, doing an expert segue) the time I played Fiasco with the folks over at Polygon.

(I’d be angry about this screencap if I hadn’t made it. As it is, I’m just angry about my face.)

If you’ve never heard of Fiasco before…. boy. I don’t know if this is a good introduction to the game or not. It’s a delightful collaborative storytelling environment to be sure, and I *love* me some worldbuilding as you know. But… it kinda went off the rails.

In a good way, I feel. And it was certainly a ton of fun. And it certainly shows how flexible the game is in terms of what you can play. But, as is often the case when I play a game, I kinda push at things to see what I can get away with narratively and creatively. It’s not that I want to break anything, I just get kind of excited full of ideas, and when you get to play with a group of folks as delightful as this….

Let’s just say it was a wild ride…

Also, I would like to go on the record as saying that I didn’t go into this game with *anything* planned. It all happened organically. My hand to glob.

Polygon posted up an article about the game, titled “Fiasco proves how fun it is to role-play without a DM.”

They even generously subtitled the article, “Patrick Rothfuss joins us for some collaborative storytelling” instead of something more realistic like, “Rothfuss weirds up our game and then drives us off a narrative cliff.”

But yeah. It was a ton of fun.

Extra points anyone who can guess in the comments below as to where I stole the inspiration for the voice and demeanor of my character….

Later space cowboys,

pat

P.S. We’re slightly more than one week into the Kickstarter, and we’re currently at $247,283. (SO close to cracking a quarter million.) We’ve unlocked a lot of stretch goals, most of which center around making the books cooler and better when we go to press, and the team is actively investigating what else we might be able to add if things keep going this strong.

But yeah. It’s been a delightful launch of the first book from Underthing Press. Thanks so much to all of you who have helped by jumping in and spreading the word.

 

Also posted in appearances, Beautiful Games, cool things, gaming, meeting famous people, Stories about stories., videos | By Pat30 Responses
Published: June 29, 2021

The Literary Tarot: Being Foolish Together

So here’s the thing, I got a little rambly while writing this post. Even for me.

The crux of the issue, is that I was invited to help design a tarot card for the Literary Tarot project that’s running right now.

Not only that, but I got to do the Fool, which is a particularly meaningful card to me. Even better, I got to pair the fool with Don Quixote, a *character* that is very close to my heart.

(Click to Embiggen.)

Did I mention that the kickstarter is raising money for a charity? Which is absolutely my jam. Except when it’s a charity that’s focused on improving global literacy, which is *double* my jam.

And if that weren’t enough, the person who is running the charity (and the kickstarter) has agreed to add a tier so that people can back at that level and support both Brink (their charity) and Worldbuilders (my charity).

Here’s the catch: as I type this, there’s only about 36 hours left in the kickstarter.

That’s why the new tier is named “Foolish Together” because doing something like this at the last minute at the end of a successful kickstarter is pure madness. (Right now they’ve got almost 10,000 backers, and are poised to tear past 700,000 dollars.)

That’s why I’m doing this little summary here, so if you’re interested, you can just hop over there go over there and take a quick look. Even if you’re not interested in backing it, you should really go look at the art and the different authors invovled. It’s really cool.

But if you want the whole story, maunder and all, here it is….

*     *     *

For years now, a big part of my job is saying no to cool new projects.

And believe it or not, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It might not seem like it to the casual observer, or to any observer at all, really. The problem with non-action, of course, is that it is non-visible. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to write a blog or tweet,  “I said no to being in a writer’s room!” Or “I passed on the opportunity to be a keynote speaker today!”

But the truth is, I nope out of the vast majority of things I’m invited to do. Maybe, like… 97% of them.

Sometimes it’s easy. But some of the missed opportunities I still think about years later. I’ve passed up several chances to do narrative design for video games. And twice I’ve said no actually holding the reins and helping assemble and lead teams for parts of video game design: once for Worldbuilding, once for narrative. Those really stung to walk away from.

I’ve given a regretful no to writing an opinion piece for the New York Times, to being involved in writer’s rooms for *very* cool properties, and writing stories comic book characters that I’ve loved since I was a kid…

And those are just the ones that spring to mind. Not to mention the hundreds of conventions, dozens of licensing deals, and many anthology invitations I’ve politely declined.

Almost all of these things I would have loved to do to some degree, but I know I need to focus more. Working on too many projects at once is foolish…

But several weeks ago, some friends introduced me to Dani Hedlund, who was putting together a Literary Tarot Deck for a charity fundraiser. Authors were pairing up cards with literary characters. A bunch of authors. Cool authors.

These are just the ones that were announced TODAY. Seriously.

And yes, that’s Steven Fry.

Anyway, I got the invite. It sounded fun and easy, and I like charity, and I’ve been dabbling with Tarot for about 30 years now. Plus, just picking a card and pairing it with a literary figure should probably take what? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

Fast forward two weeks to where I’m on a call with the CEO of the other charity doing art direction, talking about Sancho Panza, and excitedly bubbling over about the fact that what’s on his head is not, in fact, a helmet. It’s a shaving basin.

Also, there might have been singing.

Then this:

Fast forward another two weeks, where I’m talking with Dani again, asking if there’s anything I or Worldbuilders can do to help.

She mentions what I already know, that the biggest challenge is always getting the word out.

I tell her what *she* already knows, that my charity is currently doing its own fundraiser right now. Worse yet, both our fundraisers end almost exactly at the same time. We both know it would be deeply foolish for me to change directions and to promote hers at the same time.

I mention that if Brink and Worldbuilders could somehow work together in some way, we could hit it from that angle. Use the Worldbuilders mailing list. Do a livestream. Pitch it as a superhero team-up. But we both know that it would be deeply foolish for her to make a sudden addition or change to what is already a *super* successful project right at the end.

Fast forward to this:

Yup. She added an entire new tier to her kickstarter out of the goodness of her heart. Just so our charities could work together. It’s got a special postcard based off the card that we designed together that’s full of delightful little flourishes like this:

And I took a chunck of time on Sunday and we had an *amazingly* fun talk about Tarot cards, books we love, the madness of running a charity. I explain why I picked Don Quixote, and we talk about the art direction we did. It’s honestly one of my favorite streams I’ve done in ages.

Also, I was in fine form. I’m not saying I was so witty at one point that I made Dani snort. But I’m not *not* saying that either.

You should check out the video just for the joy of getting to meet Dani, honestly. She’s charming AF. Straight-up one of the most delightful people I’ve ever met. (And I’m saying this as a person who once hugged Felicia Day and Neil Gaiman on the same day.)

So… yeah. You’ve got about 36 hours to jump on that kickstarter if you’re interested.

Here’s the link.

You know what to do.

pat

Also posted in Arts and Crafts, calling on the legions, cool news, cool things, hubris, Me Interviewing Other Folks, meeting famous people, My Iconoclastic Tendencies | By Pat19 Responses
Published: January 29, 2021

Bad Analogies, Kielbasa, and all-star D&D returns…

Hey there everybody,

It feels like it’s been a hundred years since the fundraiser, and it also feels just like yesterday. I don’t know if 2020 has permanently damaged my ability to perceive time in an accurate way, or if this is just my regular post-December recovery and fugue state.

Things are going good around here. Though as I type that, I pause and think, “Hold on, that can’t be right. Everything’s awful forever now. Right? Hold on. Let me check my notes….”

Then I riffle through some papers in my head and think, Yeah, it’s still pandemic o’clock. Politics… still there. Isolation and quarantine, check. What’s wrong with me that I feel like I can say things are good?

But… that’s not *all* that’s going on, right? Vaccines are happening, too. That’s nice. We haven’t had a natural disaster in maybe three months or so? I found a new Korean restaurant in town with really nice dumplings….

Oh. Also we have a new president now, which is pretty fucking great. And democracy is still… kinda here? Mostly? Like a car we weren’t sure was going to get us all the way home through the Furiosa-style dystopian wasteland, but it did. Sure we were driving the last bit on the rims, and the windshield is gone, and it’s chugging and smoking and it looks like we tried to have a poorly-negotiated threeway with an anklyosaur and Zuul. But it got us all the way into the garage, and now we can take a deep, shaky breath and spend a *lot* of time repairing it.

Okay. Maybe that’s not my best analogy ever. Let me try again.

You know the incessant low, thrumming dread you feel when you’re really nauseous for a long time, followed by the sour, hunched misery of puking your guts out? It’s a pretty universal human experience, and we can all agree for the most part that it sucks.

But do you also remember how *good* you feel when you *stop* throwing up?

I think that’s what I’m feeling right now. Like all of 2020 was me just puking and puking forever. And now that I’m not anymore, it’s just nice.

I mean, is this the world I’d wish for if I had a pet Genie? No. You can tell because Firefly is still canceled and pizza has calories.

But you know what? There are still good things in the world. Plus my books are here. Right now, I’m pretty happy with half a loaf.

*      *      *

So far, this year has been fairly low-key over here at Rothco. I’ve been catching up on my sleep and getting my house in order. (Both literally and figuratively. My underwear drawer is *orderly* folks.) I’ve been livestreaming over on twitch fairly regularly. I’m mostly continuing my second play-through of Numenera, but I also dipped in to do some Among Us with Felicia and her crew last week. A game where I was categorically bad at everything and was forced to resort to use my Bene Gesserit powers.

Here’s a moment from that stream that I’m particularly proud/ashamed of.

It’s the first highlight I’ve ever made of a stream, but I’m not smart enough to embed it here, apparently.

On the home front, I’ve mostly been focusing on spending time with the boys. We’re currently reading The Princess Bride (which starts really slow, but picks up nicely after the introduction.) I help the boys stay on top of their at-home school stuff and deal with not being able to see their friends in person.

(Yeah. I’m 100% that dad.)

We’ve also been wrapping up the Fundraiser. While most of the flashiness of that happens in December, there’s a lot of organizing that happens beforehand, and a lot of tying up of loose ends afterwards. But despite the mad state of the world, I think we’re more on top of those things than we’ve been in years. It’s a good feeling.

Those of you who were tuned in for the fundraiser this year probably caught some of the games we played online to help spread the word about our shindig. I *hope* most of you caught at least a few of them, because this year’s games turned out amazingly.

Especially this one:

Let me tell you, folks. I’ve played some D&D in my day. I hang with some cool cats. I even occasionally pull up on with the new whip,  though I’ll admit that’s exceedingly rare.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve had the luxury of playing with a lot of really amazing folks over the years. So hear me when I say that this game was as much fun as I’ve had in YEARS. My first time *ever* playing a bard.

That would be impressive enough, but what makes it truly crazy is that this if the first time I’ve ever played with half of the other folks at the table. Brennan, Saige, and Aabria were complete strangers at the start of the video. And I didn’t even know B Dave four months ago…

Despite that, it was so much fun that at the end of it, everyone said they really wanted to come together and play again…. if we hit a follow-up charity stretch goal. It was terribly sweet, as they’re all busy people.

But we hit that goal. And now we’re getting the band back together. This weekend.

That’s right. We’ll be getting together to continue this adventure on Saturday, January 30th, from 2-5 pm, CST.

After we played the first time, I said I’d post up a blog with everyone’s info, so you could find them all on in their various fastnesses and demesnes out there on the webs.  I view this as a service to the community, as they deserve more attention than they get, and your dreary, turgid quarantine-laden existences will be vastly improved by getting more of them directly into your eye-holes.

(For those of you who have been waiting for this, sorry it’s taken so long.)

Our cool cast (and where to find them!):

B. Dave Walters is a Storyteller & proud Scoundrel American. He is best known as the writer and co-creator of Electropunk, Dungeons & Dragons: A Darkened Wish for IDW comics, and creator and DM of the Darkened Wish streaming show for Wizards of the Coast. He plays Baron Victor Temple on Vampire the Masquerade: LA by Night on World of Darkness Twitch and Freely on Silver & Steel on D&D Beyond on Twitch.

Taliesin Jaffe is an American actor, voice actor, ADR director and screenwriter. He is a regular cast member of the Dungeons & Dragons actual play series Critical Role, playing Percival de Rolo (“Percy”), Mollymauk Tealeaf (“Molly”), and Caduceus Clay.

Aabria is an American GM and RPG player that has contributed to a multitude of projects, including Failed Save on PixelCircus, Creature Collectors on Critical Bard, and hosting the Storybenders Podcast.

Performing Artist, Communication Specialist, Consultant, E-Sports Professional, Miss Oregon USA 2011, and overall Entertainer, Anna Prosser wears many hats, but for one purpose – to make a positive impact on the world around her! Anna can currently be seen on Echoes Of Eternity each Monday at 6pm PT and Extra Brains each Friday at 1pm PT on her Twitch channel. She can also be seen playing on Nights Of Eveningstar on the official D&D Twitch channel each Tuesday at 4pm PT.

Saige Ryan is an Actress, Host, Singer, and Dancer born and raised in California. She began dancing at the age of 3 and began her acting career at just 7 years old. You may recognize her from films such as I Heart Huckabees, Believers, Forget Me Not, and Maybe Someday, or her 40+ national commercials. The film Maybe Someday in which Saige plays the lead role of Abigail Donnelly was nominated for Best Picture at the 2016 Carmel film festival, and recently released on digital platforms. Saige can currently be seen contributing to the PixelCircus Twitch channel and streaming on her channel at Twitch.tv/NotSaige.

Brennan Lee Mulligan is an award-winning actor, writer, creator and producer. As a cast member of CollegeHumor, he wrote and starred in the sketch Tide CEO, which won a 2019 Webby Award and received over seven million views. He is executive producer, writer and Game Master of Dimension 20, a series produced for the CH streaming service Dropout, and also hosts Dropout’s fantasy gaming vodcast, The Adventuring Academy. Brennan is author and co-creator of the popular webcomic and graphic novel series, Strong Female Protagonist, which was selected as an Autostraddle Favorite, and was on io9’s list of Best New and Short Webcomics.

Little is known of this rare salt-type murder-hobo. This elusive narrativore does not take well to captivity, and while rarely seen in the wild, he occasionally strays near urban areas, where his barbaric yawps can be heard for a distance of up to two miles at night. Sleep cycle: Crepuscular. Mode of locomotion: sessile. Verbosity: Gregarious with occasional yeeting.

God it’s late. I don’t know what I’m even saying anymore. Bed for me.

Hope y’all are well. Hope to see some of you this Saturday for the game….

pat

Also posted in a billion links, a few words you're probably going to have to look up, Beautiful Games, cool things, gaming, videos, Worldbuilders 2020 | By Pat67 Responses
Published: December 1, 2017

Wyrmwood Gaming: The Prophecy Gaming Table

I’m guessing if you read my blog, you’ve heard of Wyrmwood Gaming before.

They’re the ones who have produced the high-end Tak sets we’ve made. Both the ones in the initial kickstarter, the travel sets we have in the Tinker’s packs, and the one-of-a-kind set pictured above that’s currently up for grabs in the fundraiser’s prize lottery where every $10 bucks gets you a chance to win among thousands of games and books.

I love them with a fierce love, which is why we’ve done so much with them, including, for example, the wooden poker chip sets we did in our recent playing card Kickstarter.

But I’m not here to tell you about the cool stuff they’ve done in the past.

No. I’m here to tell you how cool they are right now…

*      *      *

About a week and a half ago, I went to PAX unplugged where I met up with some friends, played some D&D, and just generally mucked about and had a good time.

I stopped by the Wyrmwood booth too, because, as I mentioned, I love them. I looked around at some of the new stuff they had for sale, chatted with some of the folks there, checked out the Tak set they had on display…

And then, off to one side of their booth, I saw this:

And here’s the thing. This is the point at which words fail me. This table. It was so beautiful. Not just that, it was amazingly well designed and engineered.

This is going to sound a little crazy. But I couldn’t stop touching it. I was there, chatting to the folks running the booth, and I realized that for the last 10 minutes I’d been obsessively running my hands over the table. Almost… well… kinda petting it.

But no. That actually undersells what was going on. I was caressing the table. I’m sorry to put it in those terms. But I was. I was caressing this table in a sensual and loving manner. And I could not find it within myself to stop.

I honestly don’t want to make this weird. But I don’t know how else to explain to you how much I fell in love with this table. How it looked and how it felt.

And then they showed me how it worked. How the recessed playing area could be raised and lowered. How they used rare-earth magnets to secure the drink holders. How the leaves that covered the table were not only tongue-and-groove, and not only held together with magnets, but it also has a rubber gasket so if you spill something it won’t leak through and ruin your game underneath!

God. s I’m typing this, I’m actually angry and sad and frustrated that I can’t accurately describe to you how amazing it was.

Here’s a picture they took of me when I was there.

(Look at my hands.)

How ginchy is this table? Let me tell it you. If a Unicorn were a gaming table, this is the table it would be. If you went to god’s house to play D&D, this is what you’d see. This is the Tesla of gaming tables. It’s the one table to rule them all.

This is the Lin-Manuel Miranda of gaming tables.

Anyway. While I was talking to them, creepily caressing their table, I thanked them for the donations that they had already made to this year’s fundraiser. And then I mentioned, using my best used-car salesman tones, that if they wanted to donate a table to Worldbuilders, I’d do a really good job of showing it off to the world.

And here’s the thing. They said yes.

 

*     *     *

Yeah. So as of right now, there is a Black Walnut Prophecy table in the Worldbuilders prize lottery. That means for every ten bucks you donate, you get a chance to win. (Not only the table, but over $150,000 of other books, games, and geeky swag we’re giving away.)

By the way, here’s a video that shows off the table at some length. You should really check it out.

Let me say it again: This Black Walnut Prophecy table is being added into the lottery for *anyone* to win who donates $10 or more, and selects “GAMES” as one of the items they’d like to win.

The winner, in addition to the table, will also get up to $500 worth of rail accessories of the their choice (in matching Black Walnut, this would be roughly 4 cup holders and 4 component collectors). The total retail value of all of this is $10,500. And, again, anyone who selects games as one of the types of things they’d like to win is eligible to win this table. You could donate $10 and still possibly win this.

Now, there’s some things to take note of.

First of all, this table would be fulfilled at the end of May 2019. Wyrmwood has already sold a bunch of these tables, and they can’t promise it would be done any sooner than that. You’d know you won it early next year (when Worldbuilders does the prize draw) but you’d be waiting until May 2019 for it to arrive.

Additionally, a $500 shipping credit will be applied. Which is to say, you’d be responsible for paying any additional shipping costs for delivery. See, this table is huge, and hefty. Solid wood craftsmanship is like that. And since we’re not limiting this prize to only people in North America, there’s a chance the shipping could cost a LOT of money.

When the winner is selected, we’ll reach out to be sure they’re willing and able to cover any additional shipping costs. If the winner declines, we’ll draw another name and a new winner will be chosen.

Believe me when I say, you want this table. If you’ve been holding out on donating, now’s the time to jump in, and maybe you’ll win.

And also, if you get the chance, can you show the folks at Wyrmwood a little love when you get the chance? They’ve really gone above and beyond with this donation, and they deserve some kudos.

Also posted in a few words you're probably going to have to look up, Arts and Crafts, Beautiful Games, cool news, Worldbuilders 2017 | By Pat9 Responses
Published: August 28, 2017

Secrets, Arts, and News of Three Parts

Hey there everybody,

I’m typing this as I sit in a hotel room in Seattle. Tomorrow I fly home to see my babies. But for the last week, I’ve spent my days doing secrety things with cool people.

I can’t really share any details right now. But suffice to say that I had a good time, and you’ll see the fruits of this labor… soonish. Eventually. Before the heat death of the universe at any rate. Probably.

*     *    *

If you’re more interested in things that you can put your sweaty little hands on right now. Allow me to talk about the kickstarter a little bit.

If you missed the last blog, or have simply have been distracted by the many woes of the world, you might have missed the fact that we recently launched a kickstarter to make something like this:

(Oh Bast. If I were you, I wouldn’t ever wear a shirt either….)

What’s more, the kickstarter had a delightfully successful launch, and so many of you jumped in with such enthusiasm that we’re already over 1300% funded already.

This is really nice for us, as it’s the first kickstarter we’ve done completely on our own, and we weren’t sure how it would go. So far, it’s been a wild ride. We even got selected by Kickstarter as one of the Project We Love, which was hugely flattering.

We’ve torn through a bunch of our stretch goals. Unlocking many, many new cards. And we’re showing off new stuff as quickly as we can make it available.

For example, here’s some of the new pieces: Devi, Lorren, and Mola.

(Click to Embiggen)

To make things even cooler, we’ve been slowly releasing hand-painted pieces of original card art from Echo.

 

She does a lot of her work digitally, so it’s rare for her to have original oil paintings available. Some of these will be different from the final card, either because she started working on them before the card was finalized, or simply because they had to be digitally aligned to make them symmetrical, like a card needs to be.

We included some of these when the kickstarter first launched. But they were all sold out by the second day. Now we’re preparing to launch 7 more of them. But since there’s only one of each and they sell fast, we wanted to make sure that everyone who might be interested was notified in advance before we put them up. So, on Tuesday, August 29th at 12pm Central Time we’ll be posting up the following original art pieces:

  • Master Lorren, Alternate King of Spades
  • Denna, Queen of Spades
  • Devi, Alternate Queen of Hearts
  • Cinder, Chandrian Joker
  • Fae Bast, Alternate Jack of Clubs
  • Kilvin, King of Clubs
  • Ambrose, Jack of Clubs

They range in price from $1500 to $1800, which is a steal for hand-painted art from someone like Echo. Each of them will come with all four unique decks of cards, free US shipping, and a set of the special, gilt-edged Chandrian decks.

We’ll be releasing more of the original art in another week or so, but I can’t make all of those announcements here. So if you’re hoping to get your hands on one be sure to back the campaign (even if it’s just at the $5 tier) so you get updates in your email as soon as they go out. You’re always able to change your pledge to another tier until the campaign ends.

*     *     *

We’ve also hit our final print stretch goal: and as a result, Echo will be producing another piece of art showing Kvothe’s Troupe entertaining themselves after camping for the night.

This poster is going to be extra cool though, because we’re having some cameos in it. Three of our Edema Ruh troupers are going to be the McElroy Brothers.

(Awww, brothers….)

These good good boys are going to be appearing in the print. Which fills me with delight, as I’m a huge fan of their work. (In fact, just a couple hours ago I had a real solid cry listening to the final episode of The Adventure Zone.)

What’s more, you’ll get your chance to be included in that print as well, as we’ll be putting some cameos up for grabs in the near future. If that’s something that interests you, be sure to sign up for updates on the campaign, and keep an eye on the e-mails, as that’s where we’ll be announcing when those cameo spots go live, too.

So. If you haven’t already, go and check out the kickstarter and look at the cool art. And if you’re interested in getting some of Echo’s originals, set an alarm, and we’ll see you at 12pm central time on Tuesday.

Thanks again everyone,

pat

Also posted in Arts and Crafts, calling on the legions, cool things, Echo Chernik, fan coolness | By Pat10 Responses
Published: August 15, 2017

The Name of the Wind Art Deck

So. Here’s the deal. Today we have a bit of an announcement. And by we, I mean me and my team here at Elodin Enterprises. (Yes. That’s really our name.)

But before I tell you what’s happening now, I hope you’ll understand if I mention some of the events that led up to this happening. I’m guessing this format isn’t going to be hugely surprising for any of you. Because that’s how I do.

    *     *     *

Once, years ago and miles away, I heard about an artist by the name of Echo Chernik. In little dribs and drabs, I kept hearing about her, and running into her art in various places.

And to put it plainly, I thought it was amazing.

Years went by, and kept brushing up against each other professionally. The first time she was part of the Pairs kickstarter I did with James Earnest back in 2014. A year or so later, I saw some of her art in a show at a convention and was wowed.

Later, I found out she was doing a Tarot Deck for Shadowrun.

(Queen of Swords, if you hadn’t guessed.)

Later still, James invited her into the Tak Kickstarter, where she designed the board that many of you have seen….

Which might not seem like a bit deal, until you realize that she had to design the Selas Flower before she made that board:

(Before she did this, the flower only existed in my head….)

It was during the Tak kickstarter that we first got to talk and work together a bit. (See selas flower above.) And after the ice was broken, I felt brave enough to actually approach her at a convention, introduce myself, and ask if she wanted to hang out and chat a little bit. This might surprise some of you, but the truth is, I’m kinda bashful. Especially around creative people I admire.

While we were chatting over coffee, I learned something surprising. While Echo loves going to conventions, working with game companies, and making geeky art…. that’s not really what she does for a living. Her day job is doing corporate ad design working for people like Dos Equis, Celestial Seasonings, companies like that.

“Do you like that stuff better?” I asked.

“I love illustrating for advertising and packaging. But being a geek at heart, the opportunity to combine my passion for art and geekdom is a dream,” she explained. “Unfortunately, games don’t pay well enough for that dream to be full-time.”

Hearing this, I was honestly irritated. Echo is a world-class talent, and the fact that she was forced to do corporate ad design to make ends meet… well… it kinda pissed me off.

“Would you want to maybe do a project together sometime?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager. “Maybe a kickstarter or something? My people love beautiful art, and they’re enthusiastic. I’d love to see how you’d paint my characters. If it goes well, maybe we could make enough money so you could just draw what you love for a while, and not worry so much about making ends meet….”

She didn’t laugh at me, which is always a good sign. And then we talked more and more seriously about it until… well… now.

And here we are.

I hereby present to you: The Name of the Wind Art Deck. We’ve been working on getting this ready for the better part of a year, and I’m incredibly proud of how it’s turning out so far.

On the surface, we’re making a deck of playing cards that feature art and characters from The Name of the Wind.

But fairly early in the process, Echo and I realized we had a problem. A deck of cards only has 12 face cards, but we had more than twelve characters we wanted to feature. Wouldn’t it be nice to see *more* than just the main cast of characters?

We tossed around a couple ideas until we hit a solution that I’m really proud of. We’re doing multiple decks with different pieces of art. That means we can show you more characters, and even do a couple variants with our favorites. (A Fae bast, and a mortal bast, for example.)

But (and here’s the clever bit) the backs of the cards will be the same…

That means– Well. You know what. We took great pains to explain all this in our campaign video. Plus there’s a bunch of cool animations in there to help explain what I mean.

Does that make sense? How you’ll be able to make your own decks?

This is a bit of an experiment for us here at Elodin. We’ve never run our very own Kickstarter before. But we do have experience producing goods and shipping them out because of the Indiegogos we’ve been doing for the last three years with Worldbuilders.

Luckily, the team has been doing all the logistical work. My job has been easier. Since I suck at organization, the main thing I’ve been doing is been developing the art with Echo. And it’s been turning out so, so good..

Check out young Kvothe.

And Auri…

Also, did I mention that since package design is what Echo does for a living, she’s *Super* good at it?

Look at this gorgeousness:

The red decks are the Selas Decks, and the Black ones are the Chandrian Decks. They both have alternate cards and unique jokers and…

Y’know? You should really just go over and check out the kickstarter itself. You can see all the art and the stretch goals and details there.

Also, I feel I should mention that we have a couple tiers that are limited in quantity. Partly to encourage people to jump in early, and partly because we can only produce so many of certain items

If you’d head over and check it out, I’d appreciate it. Both my team and Echo’s family have invested a lot of time and effort into this, and the first couple days of a kickstarter are *really* important. (So both jumping in early and helping to spread the word are hugely appreciated.)

Here’s the Link. 

pat

Also posted in Arts and Crafts, calling on the legions, cool things, Echo Chernik | By Pat58 Responses

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