Cleaning Up Rules and Denizen Deck Preview!
over 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 01:37:18 AM

Efficacious eagles! It’s time for our November 2019 update on Root: The TTRPG!

Project Update: November

Firstly, it’s been a bit over a month since we funded, and we’re still thrilled with all the support you showed us! Again, thank you so much!

Second, this month has mostly been about getting our ducks in a row to move forward clearly and carefully, with plans for all the awesome stuff you helped fund. We’ve got a great team, but not a huge one, so it’s important that we make sure we know who needs to be working on what, when, to make sure we deliver great books and cards and whatnot to you.

In addition to finalizing our internal process, we’ve also been working on the rules. You all have provided lots of great questions and feedback for the quickstart, and we’re working on the best way to improve the core elements of the game as we go forward. Everything from modifications to some of the moves to word choice changes is on the table.

We aren’t going to do constant updates to the quickstart—much of the quickstart is liable to change, if only in the layout/visual sense, so it would be pretty costly in time and energy to both keep the quickstart constantly updated, AND to work on the full books. With that said, we’ll likely do one more quickstart update before moving on, along with a changelog for you to see what was altered within. We’ll notify you when those changes go up.

We’ll still be checking the core mechanics, making sure they work, playtesting them heavily—but once we have these changes in place, then we’ll be pivoting to expanding on all the other mechanics, including the rules for equipment creation, for the other factions like the Woodland Alliance, and for the new playbooks!

Denizen Deck Preview Card

And to share something cool, we’ve mocked up an initial version of what we’re thinking the Denizen Deck might look like. Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments!

Into the Holidays

We’re headed to PAX Unplugged from December 6th-8th, so if you’re in Philadelphia, check out booth #3733! We’ll be officially closing down shortly after that for the holidays, so we’re unlikely to do an update in December, but we’ll be back in the new year barreling hard down Root’s trail.

If you want to keep up the conversation, please remember the Magpie Games forums are always open: And as always, thank you all for being so awesome and for all your support! Happy holidays, everyone!

WE DID IT! Campaign Ended! $602,022 Total Funded!
over 4 years ago – Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 12:53:56 AM

Courageous cats! That’s it! It’s over, and what an ending it was!

Firstly, as always…

Stretch Goal Unlocked

Because we reached $600,000, we will release all the Travelers & Outsiders content for Roll20! Like we said before, we know the value of online gaming, and we’re thrilled to support Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game through Roll20 with all the content of the game! The new expansion module content will be available alongside the core content at no additional cost to anyone.

Final Campaign Overview

Let’s take a quick look at what all you’ve accomplished over the course of this campaign:

• Funded in the first hours of the campaign
   
• $602,022 funded
   
• 6,495 Backers
   
• 23 stretch goals achieved
   
• A Vagabond’s Satchel with 4 maps, 2 decks, 7 dice pairs, 2 notepads, a GM’s Screen, a clearings booklet, and a cloth bag
   
• 6 new playbooks included in Travelers & Outsiders, giving us 18 playbooks total across both books
   
• 4 new pre-made clearings (all included in that physical clearings booklet)
   

All of this is an absolutely incredible level of success, and it’s all thanks to backers like you! Thank you so much for coming on this journey and making it so amazing!

Late Pledges

We know the pain of missing a Kickstarter campaign by just a few hours, so we’ve set up a late pledge preorder store through Backerkit right here: https://root-rpg.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

If you backed during this Kickstarter, you don’t need to do anything here—we’ll let you know when it’s time to fill out your surveys! This is only for people who want to make a late pledge.

Next Steps

First—a break! This has been a thrilling campaign, but we’re ready to rejuvenate a bit before sliding into the next steps!

Then—to work! We’re going to be playtesting and writing intensively over the next several months, so stay tuned for more word about the game’s development. We’ll be sharing mockups, examples, and snippets of new materials as we go, so you can keep track of cool new stuff here!

Remember that if you want to get a look at the game right now, you can go download the quickstart right away. We’re going to be honing and improving those materials as we go forward, but it will still give you a good taste of the game. You can download the quickstart here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/288366/Root-The-Tabletop-Roleplaying-Game-Quickstart

You can expect about one update a month from this Kickstarter in the coming days. We’ve found that it’s a good way to keep you apprised of what’s going on without inundating you with updates.

So stick with us as we move forward with Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game and fully develop it into the awesome game we all know it can be!

Coming Home

When we first thought about doing Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, we were excited by the possibilities, from telling stories we wanted to tell, to working in Leder Games’s awesome world, to featuring Kyle Ferrin’s fantastic art, to getting to share a great game with lots of players.

When Leder agreed to partner with us to make this happen, it was the first step in making all of those possibilities a reality.

And now, you’ve made it possible to to go so many steps farther, with your absolutely unbelievable outpouring of support and help!

We always know that our games come alive thanks to the people who make these projects possible, who play and run these games at tables across the world, who bring the games to life. We couldn’t ask for a better, more interested, more excited group of people to bring this game to life!

Thank you, now and always! And until next time—for the road goes ever on and on!

Over $550,000! Color booklets unlocked! Fewer than 18 hours!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 02:42:46 AM

Hectoring hawks! You’re still pushing strong, and unlocked another stretch goal! We may only have fewer than 18 hours left to go, but there’s no telling how far this vagabond will travel before we’re done!

Stretch Goal Unlocked

Because we reached $550,000, we will print the clearings booklets in color! The booklets are the 6” x 9” saddle-stitched compilations of the 4 clearings unlocked as prior stretch goals. They were automatically added to the Vagabond’s Satchel in the last stretch goal, and now, they’re even better! Every page will be in color, between graphics and art. This way you’ll have the full experience of the digital materials at your table!

Upcoming Stretch Goal

If we reach $600,000, we will release all the Travelers & Outsiders content for Roll20 for FREE! The Roll20 content unlocked in a previous stretch goal already includes everything in the core book. With this stretch goal, all of the expansion material—including the new factions and the new playbooks—will be released for free as well! This means you’ll be able to play with the full panoply of options in your online Roll20 games! Now your Heretic can play online with your friend’s Scoundrel, and everyone can band together to see what the Lizard Cult is getting up to.

Counting Down the Final Hours

We have fewer than 18 hours left in this whole campaign, but you’re still knocking it out of the park! Thank you for making this campaign such a spectacular success, and please keep spreading the word in these final hours!

Over $5 (HUNDRED) THOUSAND! Cloth bag unlocked! Clearings booklet unlocked! Final 48 hours begun!
over 4 years ago – Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 11:14:33 PM

Felicitous foxes! You did it! Well over $500,000 pledged! Another stretch goal unlocked! I got to make a silly Dragonball Z joke in the header title! Everything is awesome!

Stretch Goal Unlocked

Because we reached $500,000, we will add the cloth bag and the clearings booklet to the Vagabond’s Satchel! We know that you’ve all wanted a satchel for the Satchel since the beginning...and if we’re being honest, so did we! But we wanted to make sure that when we did the bag, we could make it practical for the project as a whole. So we’re very excited that we reached half a million dollars (!!!!) and we get to add the bag! We’ll have more on the bag and its design in the days after the campaign is over, for sure.

And we also knew that you all had asked many times for the clearings to be in print, so we decided to commemorate the $500,000 landmark with TWO items, instead of just the one! We’re very happy to be able to bring you these clearings in print! It wasn’t part of the initial plan, but knowing that you wanted them, and that there was a way we could make it work for the overall project, meant that it became a priority.

Upcoming Stretch Goals

Firstly, we just want to take the chance to say, this has been an incredible journey, and we’re so excited that the Vagabond’s Satchel has become chock full of so many goodies! But with that said, we still have a responsibility to ourselves and to you to make sure this project is manageable, both financially and in terms of a production timeline. So we’re unlikely to have further stretch goals that will add more items to the Satchel. There is already an absolute SMORGASBORD of awesome, and we want to make sure that we can get everything done in time to send you your books and the Satchel together.

That said, we’re going to focus our upcoming stretch goals on improving some of the things we’re already offering! So...

If we can reach $550,000, we will print the clearing booklets with full color! The saddle-stitched 6” x 9” booklets were originally going to be black and white, but if we reach this stretch goal, we’ll do them in full color so they are gorgeous—just like everything else in the project!

Final 27 Hours

This is it! We’re coming down to a close, but we’re not done yet! We here at Magpie Games HQ are incredibly excited to watch this amazing campaign come to the finish line, and we hope you’ll join us for the ride! Thank you all, always and forever, for all of your support! Please keep sharing out the project in these final hours! Let’s bring our vagabonds home!

Over $450,000! Notepads unlocked! Less than 72 hours left!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 02:22:28 AM

Jabbering jays! Another stretch goal unlocked, and both notepads added to the Vagabond’s Satchel!

Stretch Goal Unlocked

Because we reached $450,000, we will add both the Woodland notepad and the Clearings notepad to the Vagabond’s Satchel! These two notepads will make tracking your campaign of Root: The TTRPG even easier, while giving you a cool record of all the changes that your Woodland undergoes during the game. We always like resources like this, especially because we can look back over the sheets and remind ourselves of cool NPCs and interesting stories from the game. We’re very excited to create these notepads and share them with you!

Upcoming Stretch Goal

If we reach $500,000, we will add two new things to the Vagabond’s Satchel: a cloth bag, AND a saddle-stitched booklet of the unlocked clearings! The new cloth bag will have a full-color silkscreen printing on one side to make it even prettier. The bag’s dimensions are still being fully determined, but are likely to be approximately 9.5” x 7” x 3.5”. The bag will hold the dice and the decks of cards that come with the Vagabond’s Satchel, along with the books themselves! What’s more, we’re also going to release 6” x 9” saddle-stitched black & white printed copies of the clearings to everyone who gets the Vagabond’s Satchel! These saddle-stitched booklets will contain all 4 of the unlocked stretch goal clearings in print!

New Vagabond Portraits

Kyle Ferrin has created some fantastic new portraits for the new vagabonds featured in Root: The TTRPG, and we wanted to share them with you!

Behold—the Chronicler, Envoy, Exile, and Heretic!

The Final Days of the Beginning

We’re coming up on the final 48 hours of the campaign, and we’re excited to see our vagabonds come home! We’ve already come so far, with over $450k raised and a veritable cornucopia of stretch goals unlocked! Now, let’s bring this phase of the journey to an end together! Please let everyone know about the campaign, what you think the coolest bits are, and that it’s coming to a close! And please, keep being such awesome traveling companions!