AetherCon Q&A – Sunday Nov. 13 1PM EST
There will an AetherCon Q&A panel with your intrepid authors C. Eleri Hamilton and Scott Hamilton!
Sunday, Nov. 13th at 1PM EST – Tune in and ask questions!
Mid 2016 News
Chchchchanges
For the first year of Unwritten’s life, we’ve had the pdf as “Pay What You Want”, and the softcover at $20. While this has been lovely ‘exposure’ (and the artists and freelancers among you know how fraught that word can be…), we’ve consistently gotten the feedback (and sales notices) that this is very undervalued for the product, especially now that the baseline print standard (and with it, costs) has gone up. So, beginning July 15, the Unwritten PDF will be $10, and the softcover $25. This is still well in line with industry standards for similar products, while remaining affordable.
Supplements & Demo Module
Are behind, and we know it. There’s a laundry list of reasons why there are delays, from the semi-serious, to the just flaky. There’s not really any point in trying to spell them all out and make excuses- we just need to push forwards and get them done. Scott is taking over several areas of writing, I’m focusing on outlines and data. We promised them to you, and you will get them.
Swag and Goodies
The Unwritten Colouring Book: Just because. Featuring some of our favorite pieces of original art from the book, and some that haven’t made it into the wild yet. Available as a pdf from our website for $5 on July 15
Unwritten On Redbubble:
Ae’gura Map: Available as a poster in 3 sizes, and as a spiral bound notebook. Cover the poster in contact paper and you’ve got a write-on map for your adventures! Now available
Unwritten Age Journals: Featuring some of the Ages from our Guild of Writers backer level, these hardbound journals can be ordered with blank, lined or graphed pages. Coming July 15.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/unwrittenrpg/shop
The Great Library
Our website now features Ages written by fans of Unwritten, and shared with their permission. If you’d like to submit an Age for consideration, there’s a form for that, too! http://www.unwrittenrpg.com/the-great-library
Transitioning from Kickstarter notifications
News and PR in the future will be posted on our website, social media, and mailing list. Contact through Kickstarter will be limited to delivering supplements to backers, and any other needed backer-only information. Sign up for the mailing list on our main page; we will never share, sell, or otherwise spam your inbox.
Obduction
Cyan’s new game arrives on July 26, and we can’t wait!! Complex, seemingly abandoned worlds; unclear motivations and meanings; exploration and deep thinking?!? Yes, please.
http://obduction.com/
https://www.gog.com/game/obduction
http://store.steampowered.com/app/306760/
Mysterium
The annual social gathering of Myst & D’ni fans approaches; this year in Salt Lake City, August 5-7
http://www.mysterium.net/
Happy 2016! State of the Unwritten Address
2015 has been one heck of a year! We got physical books out to backers with only a few tumbles along the way & we released the book and two mini-supplements to the public. Including our backers, there’s now 2400+ copies of Unwritten out in the world! Pretty impressive for a small, very indie publisher!
In 2016 we’ll be focusing on a few things:
GENCON
Unwritten will be available for sale at the Indie Game Developer Network booth. As of right now, we don’t know if Scott and/or I will be attending. If any of you are going to GenCon, and would be interested in running an Unwritten game, please contact us
We’ll also be submitting Unwritten for ENnie award (http://www.ennie-awards.com/) consideration, which is both exciting and scary! You can help build awareness for Unwritten by:
1) Writing a review or rating the game! This is especially helpful on
ENWorld
DriveThruRPG
RPGGeek
We aslo love reviews on blogs, podcasts, personal pages, whatever! If you write a review, please share the link with us, so we can share it on the Unwritten page.
2) Run a game at your Favorite Local Gaming Spot, give game store owners our email (team@unwrittenrpg.com).
3) Talk to people about Unwritten! We’ve found that there is a whole lot of enthusiasm for Unwritten, once people know it exists- people remember Myst, and are excited to hear that there’s a tabletop RPG way for them to play in the universe.
SUPPLEMENTS
As we got into the writing of the supplements, we found we were really unsatisfied with them as simple stat books, and with the outline we’d built to present those stats. So, being detailed D’nerd writers, we overhauled. While this does mean that release of the supplements will take longer than originally stated, we think the wait will be worth it for a more comprehensive, detailed resource.
Supplement PDFs will be sent to backers as they are finished, then made available on DTRPG for a small cost. Once all the pdfs have been released our intention is to also compile them into a softcover volume to match the print Unwritten book.
GM MATERIALS
We’ve had many requests for Quick Start Guides and Demo Game packets, for people who want to run an Unwritten game at conventions or events. So this is something we’ll be building and making available for download on the website & DTRPG.
AGE LIBRARY
We’ve seen some pretty amazing Ages come out of Unwritten games, and we want to share them with everyone! On our website (www.unwrittenrpg.com) in the coming months we’ll be building a Great Library of our own, where we’ll showcase some of the magnificent worlds Unwritten players have visited.
THE FORUM
The Unwritten forum was a great tool during the beta test period, but it is pretty much unused at this point. We encourage everyone to join us on G+ and Facebook for chatting with the team, talking with other players, putting together games & generally hanging out.
AUTOGRAPH BOOKPLATES
One of the survey questions we asked our backers was if they wanted their copy autographed. Unfortunately, because of the way books were shipped directly to backers, we weren’t able to sign any. Instead, we’ve designed a bookplate that we’ll autograph. We’re looking into the best way to have these printed, and then they’ll be available to everyone for a small postage cost.
We’re looking forward to what 2016 has in store for Unwritten, and we thank you all for your encouragement, enthusiasm, feedback & support!
~Scott & Eleri
Unwritten Update- April/May 2015
Unwritten is Shipping!
You heard that right, deep city explorers, copies of Unwritten are beginning to wend their way to your homes. THIS WILL BE AN ONGOING PROCESS, that may take several weeks to complete, but it begins! The books are being shipped directly from the printer to you, to cut down on time, materials and added shipping costs. NOTE: If you were a hardcover backer, and you had softcover add-ons, they will come in separate shipments.
When can non-backers get their hands on Unwritten?
We are eyeing a public release date for the PDF and the Softcover on DriveThruRPG in late May, pending backer shipping progress. Coinciding with this we’re plotting a Launch Party somewhere in the Seattle metro area- further details TBA
Unwritten Update- December
Happy Chrisolstkwanzakkuah everyone! We are neck deep in layout currently, plugging in art, sorting out bits and bobs; and we are very optimistic we can order our proof copy by the end of the year. This means that, barring need to make any major changes, we’ll be able to order print copies early next year! Wahoo! Once the book is proofed, printed and sent to us, we’ll sign the copies that need signed, and start shipping. Because we chose to do two seperate shippings of swag and books, the book will be shipped out in waves, one set each month. If the sneaky back end thing Eleri has planned works, each wave will be notified when their books are shipped. crosses fingers
What comes after all the Kickstarter book rewards have been shipped? The softcover & PDF/ebook versions of Unwritten will hit DriveThruRPG and be available to the general public. The supplimental pdfs should be available to backers by April 1, and on DTRPG soon after that. We’ are considering making those available as pay PoD books, as well. We’ll be sending out review copies of the PDF as soon as it is done, so if you have a favorite RPG blog, podcast or website you’d like to see review Unwritten, please let us know!
On a tangent, we started watching The Librarians tonight, the tv series based on The Librarian movie trilogy. This show, like the recently ended Warehouse 13, is a great source of inspiration for Unwritten campaigns. While the Librarians and the Warehouse Agents are a bit more likely to be rough-and-tumble than your average D’ni Explorer, and there’s no magical artifacts to be found in Unwritten, there’s a strong emphasis in both shows on solving unusual puzzles and decoding infomation, exploring unusual places, and fussing with strange objects. Soak up the inspiration!
Unwritten Project Update- May
Over the last few weeks, we have been getting high-level developer feedback from Leonard Balsera (Fate God and D’ni fan) on the Unwritten manuscript. This input has been absolutely invaluable to us, giving us some new insights and ideas, and pointing out things we need to polish. It has shown us that while Unwritten is both true to the Myst franchise, and a good, playble game as it stands, we could do better.
Unwritten as a ‘good’ game isn’t good enough for us. We want (and we hope you want, as well) Unwritten to be a great game, one that really captures the feel and depth of the D’niverse, with fresh, dynamic game mechanics that support our three key concepts- Exploration, Discovery & Accomplishment.
In looking at where we are now, and what we want to accomplish, we’ve realized we are going to need to take several more months to focus on development, writing and playtesting. Doing so will make absolutely sure we’re giving you the best game we possibly can. Timeline-wise, this means we are looking at going to print in August, rather than May. It is a delay, but we feel it is a delay that can only have positive results.
Unwritten project update – March
What’s Going on with X ?
The manuscript has another editing pass to go before it will be available to Beta backers. This version includes five sample Ages designed by our Guild of Writers level backers, intro fiction by Ryan Miller, and a first look at our map of Ae’gura. It’s clocking in at over 100,000 words… If you are a Beta backer and you don’t have access to the Beta forums on our site, please message us privately with your forum username and we will make sure you get access.
The first stretch goal of a short story by Hugo award winning SF writer David D. Levine is complete and in editing/layout. It will be distributed as a simple PDF and as an ebook.
Our supplement books are in design right now. We have no solid time line on those yet, although our target is that they become available for download soon after the book goes to print.
Shipping Dates for the Books
We are slipping our ship date to late May/early June. We have had some opportunities come up to really fine tune the manuscript and make it as solid as possible. In order to take advantage of those, we’ll need some added time before we go to print. The delay is frustrating (for you and us!) but we promise the it is for a good cause!
Unwritten update and philosophy
Things have been quiet in the guild hall recently, but we continue to work on Unwritten. We are planning a Kickstarter to pay for editing, artwork and publishing late this year if possible. (No promises.)
I wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the concepts and philosophy behind Unwritten as a sort of initial preview.
First off, what you will not be getting for Unwritten is a rule book. That is, Unwritten is not intended to tell you how you must run a role-playing game set in the D’niverse. Rather, Unwritten is a ‘tool book’. The mechanics and guidance that are going into the book are intended to give you a wide array of tools that you can use to make all sorts of stories. The Fate community has a saying: “Fiction, not physics.” This is key to Unwritten. It’s not a linear walk-through like you would see on how to play Myst. Rather, it is more like a travel guide that points out all the interesting places, suggests travel routes and lets you build your own journey. The story does not emerge from the rules; the rules support the story.
Second, I wanted to describe the central themes of Unwritten as I am writing it. The D’niverse is a place for adventure. There’s room for all sorts of pulpy goodness that would fit just fine into an Indiana Jones movie or as part of a Steampunk novel. Unwritten gives you tools for having epic adventures. It’s also a place for discovery. There are always mysteries to solve. Some are puzzles, and others are like crime scenes. And beyond that, there are mysteries about ancient civilizations and strange sciences to delve into. Unwritten provides ways to role-play the journey into the unknown. And finally, the D’niverse is a place to accomplish things. “Find a way, make a home” as Yeesha said. You’ll be able to create amazing machines, take advantage of the strange things you find in the Ages, as well as work together with others to make changes to the your world, both local and cosmic.
We’re really looking forward to bringing this to you. You’ll be seeing more frequent updates come along as we finish the first drafts of the game and begin to plan the next phase.
More updates to come!
Hello my friends.
I wanted to take a few minutes to talk to all of you out there about where we are in the production of Unwritten. We are strongly committed to making Unwritten a top notch RPG product. We want it to both capture the spirit of the Myst franchise as well as open up new vistas for adventures and experiences in D’ni. In that light, we’ve been trying out a lot of different options and variations of the Fate system, and even more so now that the FateCore version of the Fate game has been made available to supporters of the FateCore kickstarter.
So, we have been grinding away in terms of designing and redesigning the basic game, as well as engaging in alpha playtests of various mechanics. None of that is in a final form, but we continue to design, discuss and refine. I will be posting more often as we start to bring together the disparate elements together in more tangible forms. I hope to give you more insight into the philosophy behind Unwritten and how it develops.
Shorah
FATE Core Kickstarter!
As we have discussed earlier, Unwritten will be based on the upcoming game engine FATE Core, which is the latest iteration of the successful and creative FATE system.
Well the good people at Evil Hat (is that an oxymoron?) are almost finished, and are doing a Kickstarter to get it out the door. The Kickstarter is already approaching its third stretch goal, and if you pledge $10US, you get all of the stretch goal additions.
So, take a look at the link and throw your money at them. FATE Core is looking to be a valuable toolbox for any GM or player.
Go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/fate-core