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Downcrawl 2E - Roleplaying in a Weird, Wondrous Underworld

Created by Aaron A. Reed

NOTE: Downcrawl pre-orders are now closed as the game has gone on sale! You can get it from DriveThruRPG.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Production Progress, Late Pledges Close Soon!
about 1 year ago – Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 11:40:53 AM

TLDR: Complete your survey if you haven't, and late pledges end Jan 31st!

Hi, Downcrawl backers! A brief update about where things stand on the project right now.

The vast majority of you have completed your backer surveys (thank you!). I'll be sending a separate email to those who haven't yet, but if you know already you need to do this, please log in to BackerKit and get that survey done now. The survey is the only way I have to collect your mailing address and charge for shipping; without these two things taken care of, I cannot get your pledge rewards to you.

If you haven't pledged yet, late pledges will close on January 31st, so get your copy of Downcrawl now while the getting's good! While the cards and rulebook will still be available after that date, this will be your final chance to get the deluxe editions of Downcrawl, with the cool bonus items only being produced in limited quantities for this campaign.

How is production coming? Well, I received these fine-looking proofs of the softcover and hardcover rulebook and they are 99% of the way there. This proof did lead to some tweaking to the inner margin size-- one of the things that's hardest to tell in advance is whether the text will look too close to the center spine, which varies based on particulars of the binding, page thickness, number of pages etc. Tweaking these necessitated some further layout adjustments, but nothing too major. While I was knee deep in InDesign again, I also did another editing pass and some other final adjustments, placed names that Patron backers provided, and took care of some other last minute details. I'll be putting in an order for one more (hopefully final) proof soon, but the book is nearly to the finish line.



A quick status of rundown of all the other items:

  • The Delver's Guide: Now that the book page numbers are locked, I'm porting over the final rule/table text and page numbers from my early draft, and expect to order a proof of this in the next couple days.
  • The Index Bookmark: completed this week (was also waiting on page lock and final numbering)
  • All the decks (Downcrawl Deck, Even Deeper, Encounter, 10 Bonus Cards): I've approved the final proof on all of these, so they're locked and ready to go! Technically, there are actually five decks: if you're getting both the Downcrawl and Even Deeper Decks, I've decided to ship them together in a custom tuckbox, which has also been proofed and is now ready too.*
  • Adventure Zine: done, proofed, ready to go
  • Volume/Folk templates: done, proofed, ready to go
  • Dice: being produced as we speak by the lovely folks at Dice Extractions!
  • Tack Coins: physical proof being produced as we speak by the lovely folks at The Monterey Company!
  • Dice + coin bags: ordered from supplier (these were pre-made items so no custom design work was necessary)

* Wonky reason there aren't tuck or deckboxes for standalone decks: it's mainly because of the slightly unusual form factor. The cards are tarot-sized, but there are less of them per deck than the average tarot deck size (80 cards). This meant all the available options from the card manufacturer were either too small to fit the cards or too tall to prevent them from flopping around during shipping or looking unsightly on the shelf. But two decks plus some instruction cards worked out to just around 80 cards, letting me to do a tuckbox for the special case of a two-deck combo-- and there is just enough wiggle room to get your ten bonus cards in there too, if you were an early bird or returning backer. Standalone decks will come banded in a plastic sleeve, FYI.



Everything is still on schedule, although production of the metal Tack coins is a little behind where I'd hoped they would be at this point, due to some necessary back and forth to make sure the design was exactly right-- but there was some buffer built in here, so we should be fine. Here's the current schedule:

  • Jan 31: Backer surveys locked (orders can no longer be changed after this date)
  • Feb 10: Credit cards charged for shipping, add-ons, and late pledges
  • Feb 24: Addresses locked (shipping addresses can no longer be changed after this point)
  • Feb 26: Books ordered from printer
  • Late March: Books begin shipping from printer to backers; bonus items begin shipping from me to backers
  • Early April: Orders start arriving

That's all for now! Hope your new year is off to a great start, and take care,

--Aaron

P.S. re: the digital version released to backers over the holidays: there were a few snags with the distribution on this that meant that not all backers were able to see them at first. These should all be resolved now (I hope!) so if you had any trouble accessing the file last month, you can log back in to your BackerKit survey at https://downcrawl.backerkit.com , make sure it's completed, and on the confirmation page, look for a button reading "Get Your Digital Downloads" or "Get Your Digital Rewards." Note that for now this only includes the early PDF of the book: other digital rewards will be added this spring once the project is officially released.

A gift to you...
over 1 year ago – Tue, Dec 24, 2024 at 08:17:13 AM

TLDR: Fill out your survey if you haven't, and you can download the near-final digital Downcrawl now.

It's the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, but also, potentially, the coziest. As a solstice gift for my Downcrawl backers (which I hope you can enjoy accompanied by a blanket, a warm beverage, and the smells of something good baking), I'm happy to release early a near-final version of the full digital Downcrawl rulebook. (Instructions for accessing can be found at the bottom of this update.)

This version is still missing a few things: acknowledgments and custom names from Patron backers, online play aids (none of which have been posted yet), and the final editing pass. But the art, layout, text etc should all be 99% of the way there, barring any additional typos or tweaks that get caught before production on the book is locked sometime in January. I hope you enjoy!

(And if you do catch any of those typos or have other feedback, please let me know.)




Backer Surveys

If you haven't filled out your backer survey yet, now's the time. You should be getting reminder emails from BackerKit if you still need to do this. If you're not getting those or need to log back in for any reason, you can access your survey at https://downcrawl.backerkit.com .

Late Pledges

...Are still open for a few more weeks! I have already finalized item counts for a few bonus items that needed to be moved into production, so there are a limited number of additional pledges I can accept for certain tiers. If you're still on the fence about backing, or know other folks who might be interested in weird underground adventures, it's not too late to join us.

(Have I used a printout of a pre-order page as a last-minute gift before? Yes. Do I recommend this for small children? No.)

Progress Update

I'll get into more details in a few weeks in my regular January update, but in brief: proofs have been ordered of most items, including the dice and Tack coins. All card decks have been finalized and are in proofing. We're entering the "wait for physical items to be moved around" stage of the project, which is a relief to get to after the last few months of pretty intense work.

More next month as updates come in. Until then, enjoy your end of year festivities, and talk to you in 2025,

--Aaron

Downcrawl Surveys This Week!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 12:51:34 PM

TLDR: Fill out your Backer Survey when you get it in the next couple days!

Hi Downcrawl backers,

It's almost survey time! In the next day or two, you should be receiving an email from BackerKit inviting you to fill out your backer survey. THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT as it's how you A) tell me your shipping address, and B) get set up to pay for shipping. I've got all the shipping details set up on the back end now, so you'll be able to see the final price for shipping before you finalize your order on the survey page.

The survey's also your last chance if you want to do any upgrading of your pledge or grab additional add-ons. In particular, a reminder that the following physical items will not be available after the campaign closes, so get them now if you want them in print! (And a reminder that Late Pledges are still open: if you're seeing this and haven't backed yet, now's your moment.)

  • The spiral-bound Delver's Guide (player reference book)
  • The Index Bookmark
  • Tack coins (of which there are better mock-ups now, see below!)
  • Downcrawl d6 dice
  • Blank Folk/Volume template cards 
  • The Adventure Zine  

December Progress

For the last few weeks I have been busy as a blind titanic mole rat that gathers worshippers to its godburrow with ceaseless, maddening, ear-piercing squeals.

The biggest achievement has been getting all the art into the book and doing the final layout, as well as a thousand and one tasks from indexing to spellchecking to tweaking the border styles of individual table cells to make sure the damn thing looks as good as possible. I think it's starting to look pretty great!




I've also made a few rules tweaks based on feedback from playtesters (thanks again!) ironing out a few rough patches. Some especially noteworthy changes (mostly of interest to those who checked out an earlier draft of the rules):


  • Sliver of Fate's Face a Challenge move has been adjusted to provide more opportunities to use your Aspects: in particular, to get a win you can now push yourself too hard, adding Setbacks to either an Aspect or an Approach. You can do this on a roll of 7 or less; the old option for a roll of exactly 7, where you could ask your Guide for a devil's bargain, has been removed. (It was the only place in the book that term appeared, and was kind of squashed in without room to really explain, so this feels cleaner.)
  • The Oracle table for Solo players has been adjusted to use the same top-to-bottom way of reading the dice as most of the other tables in the book, which also feels cleaner and more consistent.
  • The Remoteness of a Volume now no longer adds additional journey steps, which could often feel punitive when planning certain kinds of journeys. Instead, Remoteness restricts when you can plan a journey to a place at all (for instance, you can't reach a Sheltered Volume that has no Routes connecting to it) as well as restricting the maximum Routes as before. This feels like it encourages treating journeys more like puzzles (if we go here first, then we can get there) than long slogs of resignation; and also simplifies tracking Volume Remoteness on the map.

All fairly minor and wonky changes, but I'm really pleased to get these last tweaks in place, and see all the parts of the rules really singing in harmony together.

Other progress: The Adventure Zine (entitled The Hypogean Solution) has been written, gone through layout, and even playtested. I'm super excited at how this turned out. It's a really fun way to add a bit of pre-planned plot to an otherwise spontaneous campaign, emerging at whatever pace the players choose to pursue it. It works both in Guided play (with a gamemaster) as well as Impromptu or Solo, and it's really cool to see an adventure module work even with no one having read it or prepped to run it in advance! 


Speaking of cover art, cover art for everything else has been finalized: the two variants of the book, the Adventure Zine, the Delver's Guide, as well as title cards and instruction cards for all three card decks. In particular the two variant options for those getting a hardcover are finalized (and you'll get to choose this in your backer survey): these ended up looking extremely close to the mock-ups I produced for the campaign, thankfully. The softcover will featured the Blue Variant design.
 


Finally, I'm working with a coin maker on getting the hefty Tack coins created and produced. Here's a sneak peek at the current design! The concept is cave passages that connect along the sides of the coin, so if you push them together on the table in any configuration, the passageways appear to line up. The below is not necessarily the final design, but we're honing in on it! There's no scale here but the coins will be noticeably larger than a US quarter, about 1.75" along a side, and should feel extremely satisfying to clunk down and slide around the table as you gain and lose your ability to navigate the mazeways of the Deep, Deep Down.



I'm still on track for the schedule laid out in the previous update, which calls for orders to be locked in January, cards charged in February, and items delivered in March. I'll keep folks apprised if anything changes.

In the meantime, watch out for that BackerKit survey link and fill out your survey once it arrives. I hope your 2024 wraps up successfully, and talk to you again in 2025!

--Aaron

Funded!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Nov 20, 2024 at 11:27:48 AM

TLDR: We funded! No action needed at this time from backers; if you haven't backed yet, you can still make a late pledge.

Thanks to 865 backers, Downcrawl 2E successfully funded last Friday, at approximately quadruple (!) the original goal. I can't thank you all enough for believing in this project, whether you were a fan of the first edition or are new to the Deep, Deep Down. It's such a burst of adrenalin and revitalization to finish up this game knowing how many folks are out there waiting for it. Thanks again for making it happen! 🙏

A couple things to update you on:
  • Info on late pledges
  • Rough project schedule
  • Last chance for playtests
  • What I'm working on now

Late Pledges

The campaign is officially closed, but I'll still be accepting "late pledges" for the next little while while I'm getting things sorted out for final production runs. If you haven't backed yet or have friends who still want in, you can make a late pledge here.

(Note that BackerKit's interface for this is sort of weird: rather than showing all the great images and hype text I spent so much time sweating over, it's literally just a dropdown where you select a pledge level... a bit uninspired. For that reason I would suggest if you're sharing the link, use the original project page, which has a button "Make a Late Pledge" that takes you to the pre-order page.)

For now, late pledges are identical to normal pledges: the same tiers etc. are available as during the campaign. This will change at some point as I move different items forward into production and need to cap quantities, so do pledge now if you were still on the fence, especially if you want access to some of the cooler exclusive bonus items!

Specifically, while the Downcrawl rulebook and cards will continue to be available for sale post-launch, the following items are one-off production runs and will not be available after the campaign closes (or once stock runs out). If you wanted any of these and they aren't included as part of your pledge level, you'll be able to add them as add-ons to your order once I sent out backer surveys next month.

  • The spiral-bound Delver's Guide (player reference book)
  • The Index Bookmark
  • Tack coins
  • Downcrawl d6 dice
  • Blank Folk/Volume template cards 
  • The Adventure Zine  

(More details about all of these are available on the main project page.)

Project Schedule

While this project is simpler in some ways than others I've done, there's still quite a bit of logistics juggling in store. I have four main suppliers (for the core books, the cards, the supplemental printed material, and the bonus items) who each have different turnaround times for proofs and orders, and are on different continents so are affected by different holidays etc.

I made the decision early on to not try to bring all the game materials together in one place and put them into a box or something (as nice as that might have been) because this slows down delivery significantly and adds more shipping expenses. This means, depending on your pledge level, you'll likely receive your rewards in two different shipments:


  • Core book
  • Cards (or cards + bonus items)

I do realize it would kind of suck to get your cards three months before the game that lets you play with them, so I'm trying to time things such that you'll receive the two shipments as close together as possible. However, this means a decent amount of coordination to ensure all the various production and shipping schedules sync up. I used a wall in my house to plan out week by week when things need to be ready for different stages of proofing, ordering, and shipping:


(The conveniently placed light fixture helpfully denotes the period around Christmas/New Year's, and the other orange card is Chinese New Year which affects shipping of the Tack coins; both cause production and shipping slowdowns I need to plan for.)

So I have a good rough idea of what's to come (of course things are always subject to unforeseen changes and delays). But here is my current plan for project fulfillment:


  • Early December: Backer surveys open. The important things here are you'll enter your shipping address and enter payment details to pay for shipping (final shipping costs will be visible on the survey interface at this time). You'll also be able to adjust your pledge level or add add-ons.
  • Mid December: Book text locked. "Patron" backers wanting to name an NPC must have filled out their survey by this point for their contribution to appear in the printed book!
  • Late January: Orders locked (last chance to make changes)
  • Early February: Credit cards charged for shipping, add-ons, late pledges
  • Mid February: Final order for printing core books put in
  • Mid March: Books begin shipping; bonus items begin shipping
  • Late March: Orders start arriving

As far as my schedule for updates: I plan to post a backer update at least once a month, probably a bit more often near important deadlines, and will try my best to give folks plenty of heads-up about actions you need to take. In particular, I'll put any action needed from you in the first TLDR paragraph of each update.

Last Chance For Playtests

You might have noticed the "Book Text Locked" milestone above, coming up in about three weeks. This is so early because I need time to order final proofs of the book, verify everything looks okay and have time to make changes before final printing begins. What this means is that these are the last few weeks for playtest feedback!

In case you missed this, backers already have access to the current draft of the rules. In that download are some notes on how to submit playtest feedback. If you're curious to check out the current state of the game, I'd love your eyes on the book, or (even better) you or your group's feedback on actually playing! But the deadline is definitely rapidly approaching, so do this sooner rather than later if you're curious (and thank you in advance for any feedback).


What I'm Currently Working On

Getting the core book finished is the most urgent matter right now due to the aforementioned deadlines. I've been working with an "ashcan" version that doesn't have art in place, but this week I'm starting to insert art and reflow pages to get to the final layout. I'm also working on the initial layout for the 30 bonus pages in the hardcover edition, which includes (among other content) some cool pre-made settings originally created for the Downcrawl 1E supplement 10 Down:


I'm also finalizing the three card decks, including making title and instruction cards for each. Very happy with how these are shaping up!


I also recently did the final revisions on Downcrawl Worlds, the bonus game you can play with the Downcrawl Deck cards. Really excited to get some of these ancillary materials finished up so I can turn back to finalizing everything for the core Downcrawl game!

That's it for this update! Thanks again for being part of the project, and until next time,

--Aaron

The Final Hours!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Nov 15, 2024 at 10:49:36 AM

We're in the final hours of the Downcrawl 2E crowdfunding campaign!! We've just hit $75K which is incredible... let's see how much more we can get the word out about this game in these last few hours!

It's actually fairly tricky to self-promote your own crowdfunding campaign these days. RPG sites don't want to cover them, many places only want to talk about shipping games rather than preorders, and even most TTRPG communities require posts about your own games to go to a "self-promo" channel which everyone has universally muted. Despite the fact that there've been dozens of discussions about the first edition of Downcrawl on the r/rpg Subreddit over the years, for instance, my attempt to post about it there was predictably smacked down:


All this is a slightly complainy way of saying: I'd really appreciate anything you could do to spread the word about Downcrawl 2E today to your followers and communities and friends. You can download a bunch of hi-res images here for easy sharing, and here are some posts on social media you can reshare as well:

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/aaronareed.bsky.social/post/3lax5f3xapk2v
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DCXzBT7xkP7
Mastodon: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aaronareed/113484126856890225

I'll repeat my mantra from my first update: Word of mouth is the ultimate currency in our oversaturated media landscape, so thanks in advance for any recommendations you make. 🙏 ❤️

What's been happening on the game otherwise? This week I've been working on finalizing the Encounter Deck, one of the add-ons which helps with generating random encounters during journeys. As opposed to some other systems, while Downcrawl encounters can certainly be dangerous, they're often framed more as interesting side quests than just a list of random monsters you might fight.



The four kinds of Encounter (plus Fungal Foraging, sort of another kind of encounter) each have different instructions for how to draw other cards to "assemble" a final situation. I did a bunch of experimentation with layouts earlier this fall to find a way to position all of these "pieces" together in a way that helped your eye align them, no matter which configuration the cards were in. This took a lot of rejiggering since each card can appear in multiple configurations with other cards.



This week I've been going back to these mockups (which are the early ones you saw on the campaign page and in the Encounter Deck video there) and layering in the final artwork. The deck cards are created in InDesign, which has a helpful feature that lets you import one InDesign document into another; so I created a file showing cards laid out in all the major combinations which will auto-update as the card design and art is tweaked, so I can see how edges and lines were looking:


You can see how this helps me check that, for instance, the artwork on the Fungal Forgaging area aligns with a second card to produce a compound fungus name ("emerald funnels"):



I'm really happy with how the Encounter Cards are working together and looking with this final art in place. I ordered another proof yesterday and will share pictures once I see them in action. (The Encounter Deck is included at the "Complete" pledge tier or as an add-on to any order.)

That's all for now! After the dust settles from the final campaign day, I'll probably share an update some time next week with my current thinking on timelines for production, shipping and fulfillment. A reminder  that shipping is not included as part of your pledge, and will be charged separately shortly before your items ship, which allows me to keep the cost to you as close to the actual rates as possible. (You can review the "Shipping" section of the campaign page for my best estimates currently about what the shipping charge will be for your pledge and region.)

Thanks for being a fan of Downcrawl, and never stop exploring,

--Aaron