Legends Untold - The Illumination of Deepsorrow

Deepsorrow Campaign Guide changes - extra book, extra cards, Deluxe Upgrade Set, General update
about 1 year ago – Sun, Jan 26, 2025 at 09:20:13 AM

Hey folks, 
 

Campaign Guide improvements

I have some fantastic news for you, the Deepsorrow Campaign Guide has been proofed. We now have the last of the books across all of the sets added to the assembly list for Whatz. In particular I want to pass on my thanks to Targanth/Vern for his help on this - thank you so much!

This book was always going to be the hardest part of the project to proof because the original prototype is a couple of years old and we have made a number of improvements to the game since the initial prototype was made. As we finished our internal challenge we made a number of key improvements to the Deepsorrow Campaign Guide which I will share with you here. These improvements were incorporated into the proofed files.

Improvement 1 - Campaign Guide split into two books
 

We have added an extra book to the Deepsorrow set, called the Clue Directory. We did this because the original 124 page Campaign Guide was already a bit of a beast and as part of our stretch goals we added a further 8 Bonus Episodes, which we have now finalised as a Bonus Campaign (or you can play standalone as you desire). In addition to these extra pages we wanted to add some extra content around the Campaign ending which added further pages to the book too. 

In practical terms we found that as you play the Campaign you will regularly be flicking around the Clue Directory section looking for the relevant Clue entry and then returning to the relevant Episode page in the Campaign Guide. This can be a lot of book flicking and bookmarking when you really want to focus on your adventure.

To save your sanity we have split the old Campaign Guide into two books:

• A new smaller 64 page Campaign Guide covering the Campaign introduction, special rules, Episodes and the Bonus Campaign 
• a new 80 page Clue Directory which you use to access the relevant Clues entries as you need to.

Please note we have used the artwork from the original Campaign Guide on the new Clue Directory book as that particular piece fits the theme of discovery much better. We have used an action piece, showing the new Shock Condition rules being used, as the artwork on the new smaller Campaign Guide.

Improvement 2 - Tighter ending and how they work for Apprentice

I had to think hard about this one - how I can share a glimpse of what we have done without spoiling things? The image I have shown here is maybe a 1 x 2 inch sneak peek of a far larger piece we have added to the Campaign Complete page. We did not have this piece when we sent the prototype out and it has not been shared with anyone outside of IG apart from Vern (who was adamant he was OK with the spoilers). Outside of this crop is something really special to Mor Nadar, something that you will work towards as you play the Campaign. For now I will simply point out you can see the Envoy, Earthguide and Skygazer alongside their loyal polecat coming towards the end of their journey in a truly epic fashion. The art we have added to the project is very special to me and properly reflects the end of that journey.

I hope that's OK - trying to balance the real world coolness vs spoilers here folks!

Improvement 3 - extra cards

As we continued to iterate the endings for Deepsorrow and answer the 'what next?' question we realised that there is a smarter way to deal with unlockable endings. I can not share the pictures of the cards we have made as the spoilers would be far too high however we have now added two extra cards into Deepsorrow (at our cost) to enable you to unlock those endings in a far more fun manner and (depending on how uch of Deepsorrow you investigate) give you a simpler and easier way to choose your onward path. In practical terms this will make your 'save game' easier. If you manage to find one of the cards on your journey you will have the choice on whether to use it in your next session.

Improvement 4 - Story Track interface improvement

To make it simpler to find Clue entries really clearly we have adopted the three colours system from the Story Tracks so that you always know where you are going next. So if you are discovering more about the History of Deepsorrow (Green), People and Creatures (Red) or Ancient Artifacts (Blue) tracks it is now much easier to see that link in each section.
Here is an example of the introduction to the Story Tracks from Deepsorrow below:

And here is an old vs new example of how the Story Track fonts are colour coded to make it simpler to find things.

Improvement 5 Extra art

When we launched the prototype we did not have all the art ready for the game. We always intended to go back and add in some of the pieces into the Campaign Guide so that you can see some of the cool artifacts and other things in greater detail across the book. We have now taken the opportunity to do that across the new Campaign Guide and Clue Directory to give you a more polished product with greater visibility of the art throughout.

I am trying to not show any clues  here so I have blacked out the text from Clue 35 to show you the old 'space for art' in the original clue book.

And the revised version in the Clue Directory with the art added:
 

Here's another example from the new book:

And another:

And another:

We have repeated this process throughout both books.

Deluxe Upgrade

I said I would respond to you all when I know more. Firstly I wanted to say thanks to all of you who got in touch to register your interest, apologies it has taken me this long to come back to you, we were waiting on confirmation of some things from the manufacturer. About 50 of you have asked for the deluxe card sets. We have spoken to Whatz who have confirmed that we can make extra sets of the cards rather than break open complete games (which we would rather not do). 

There are a couple of issues with the plan we had. The small production run makes things slightly more difficult for the manufacturer. Our fulfilment partners will also require some form of packaging for these cards otherwise we fear they may be missed out from your pledges as they are sent out - this will cause total chaos and not create a good experience for you. Finally when we actually look at the number of cards in the round from the Enhanced Editions for both sets and add in the Novice Booster Sets they actually come pretty close to 400 cards in total. This is a lot of cards!

Our original estimate was off. This is not an easy thing for us to do, but we want to give those of you who have asked for it the cards as you have asked for them. Unfortunately our original estimate of £5 will not cover our costs and need to revise that to £8 per set.

This is not something I write lightly as I don't enjoy coming back to you in this way. However many of you were asking for the sets and we had to do something to get the ball rolling and try to establish a pricing mechanism with the manufacturer, it turns out our landed cost estimate for a relatively bespoke production run was too light in this case - I'm sorry for that.

Please note we have not charged anybody anything for the Deluxe Upgrade kits to date, I also understand if some of you who previously wanted it no longer wish to do so. The price of the increase is roughly the price of a coffee, and we feel that the c. 400 cards of adventuring experience you will receive in return for that new £8 price is very good value, however that is clearly a decision for you to make.

We have now created that item on BackerKit. If you still wish to proceed with your deluxe Card Upgrade at the confirmed price of £8 (no additional shipping) then I would ask you to write once again to us at: [email protected] so that we can process accordingly.
 

Production Update and Lessons learned

A few of you have been asking about shipping estimates, delays and lessons learned.

What I would say here is that running this campaign is one of the hardest things I have had to in my life, period. Our goal was to please everyone, to create a standalone expansion for Legends Untold that introduced new concepts, let you explore the world in a much greater depth, and through better accessibility and an improved user interface make the game much easier to learn and play.

The challenge is that we are not doing this with just one product (Deepsorrow) but also revising the two other core sets (Caves and Sewers) and the existing and new expansions too. We are trying to do all of this to make the game exciting and new and easier to play for anyone new to Mor Nadar but we are also trying to look after all of you who have helped us on the journey to date. This is the right thing to do, but it's not easy. Every time we tweak something, we have to check what that means for every set and then for both new and existing backers alike.

This work all comes at a cost. I don't mean financially - we have been very prudent with the funds raised and other than completing art pieces that we needed for the games those funds are sitting where they should be - ready to be spent on manufacturing and shipping to get you your games. The cost I am referring to is time, we just only have so many hours in the week. IG is the product of two people with full time jobs and families supported by Morgan at Jovial who does Graphic Design, Art Direction and a host of other important tasks to help publish the games.

We are running at this as hard as we can. With the books now complete we are in conversations with Whatz about the final inserts and then we can finalise production numbers. We do understand you want your games and we know you have been waiting a long time for them very patiently - thank you. Apart from an illness which knocked me out for some months the delays we have encountered are because we are trying to give you the very best products we can and also trying to keep a diverse set of customer needs happy at all times.

My key lesson learned is in theory to keep it simple. In this case I'm just not sure how we could have done that other than not reprinting Caves and Sewers. If we had just created Deepsorrow and Potions & Preps and introduced the new format cards we would probably have created 60% less work for ourselves. Do I think that would have been the right result for you, the original backers who brought Mor Nadar to life? 

No.

After we complete this project we have some other games in the line up we are looking at first. However for the planned Apprentice sets of Legends Untold, yes absolutely I do not want to be repeating the process in this manner again. 

Wishing you all the best.

IG

 

V1 to V1.5 Foe Mapping, new cards, deluxe upgrade pack
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jan 02, 2025 at 08:52:18 AM

Happy New Year folks!

Terminology 
For the sake of simplicity when I refer to V1 Foes I mean the cards that came with the original printing of Weeping Caves, Great Sewers and the Novice Treasure Set. 

When I refer to V1.5 Foes these will be (subject to to any final changes) in the format of those shown in Update 42 with the increases to text space, font, set icon and card code.

V1 to 1.5 Foe Mapping
The responses to the previous update were almost unanimous - you want the new format to be adopted across all the cards (including the Foes) as not doing so would be to the detriment of the game. 
However some of you have expressed concerns about cards matching across sets.

We have banged our heads together and scenario planned a number of use cases:

(a) playing original Caves/Sewers + Upgrade pack
(b) playing Enhanced Caves/Sewers
(c) playing Deepsorrow
(d) combining Enhanced Caves/Sewers with Deepsorrow
(e) combining original Caves/Sewers with Deepsorrow

If you play scenario a) or e) and we upgrade the Foes to v1.5 you will always have a mismatch of Foes between V1 and V1.5. 

We debated about making the Upgrade pack having V1 Foes only and using V1.5 for all the other products, this would make the Upgrade pack Foes more visually backward compatible with the original Foe cards and eliminate that concern. 

On the other hand it would of course mean that those of you who bought the new content and wanted so use the Enhanced Edition Foes with their Deepsorrow Set would then be mixing V1 and V1.5 Foes - so we would be disadvantaging that group of our backers.

In the end we think the fairest way to do this is to add in a copy of all of the V1.5 Foes from the Weeping Caves EE Set, the Great Sewers EE Set, and the NB1 Set into the Novice Booster Upgrade pack. That means that anyone who is receiving the Upgrade pack as part of their pledge or because they have purchased it separately will now have a V1.5 upgraded version of all of the original Foe cards. 

I have tried to represent where the Foes sat originally and where they sit going forward in the diagram below. Please note, as per the key the numbers in each set outside the brackets represent unique Foes and the numbers inside the brackets represent total Foe Cards. We have included multiple copies of certain Foe cards in the second printing whereas all Foe cards were unique in the first printing. This is intentional as it improves the feel / likelihood of drawing a certain Foe type in some of the Scenarios.

 

What does this mean for me?
If your pledge includes a Novice Upgrade set you don't need to do anything else. The Upgrade set was previously going to include the 3 extra Foes from the WC EE set and the 3 extra Foes from the GS EE set. It will now include 43 Foe cards rather than 6 Foe cards.

What is the cost?
We will absorb the cost for this in an effort to give you all parity across your sets. Please note we can not do this for all of the other card types, however we believe that giving you the Foe cards and the previously mentioned Party Table Test cards in your sets will address any concerns about card matching.

What about the other cards?
Please note we already have a large number of SKUs for this project, every other SKU we add makes the chances of errors at fulfilment (often well beyond our control) even more likely. For those that absolutely have to have all of their other cards matching (note we do not think this is necessary but we are trying to accommodate those of you who say that it is important to you) we are going to try to offer a complete set of all the Caves, Sewers and Novice Booster 1 cards as part of a Deluxe Upgrade pack. If you wish to partake of this we can offer this to you for an additional £5 on top of your base pledge.

If you wish to only purchase the Deluxe Upgrade pack we can offer that to you for £24 instead of the original £19.

Please note I need to caveat this heavily. Demand will dictate how easy it is for us to make this happen, it may be that we need to make the Upgrade packs as standard and then ship the cards beside them in your final box not actually in the Upgrade pack.


What about the pledge manager?
A number of you have asked for us to reopen the pledge manager so you can add more products to your pledge (dividers, additional sets etc). There is no intention to charge a second shipping charge on any additional items, I know that has been a concern for a few of you. 

If you want to add additional items including the Deluxe Upgrade pack please email us at: [email protected] it is the easiest way for us to keep track of any changes you want to make to your pledge.

I hope the above is clear, with the issue around Foes now resolved we will resume final pre-press proofing and start getting those files ready for the manufacturer.

Thanks

IG

Important changes to cards as per feedback on previous updates
over 1 year ago – Mon, Dec 30, 2024 at 02:15:17 PM

Hi folks,

We have taken on board the mixed feedback you gave us on the previous update and now propose a slight change in direction.

Some of you were very positive about the new format.
Some of you were very positive but also don't like the fact that some of your cards will look slightly different from your existing cards.

This is a tricky one for us to solve as we are in danger of making no decision (and delaying manufacturing further) because we can not make everybody happy.

Arguably the simplest solution is to change none of the cards at all - we really think this is the wrong call, the introduction of the Environment flags make the filing system and the dividers over half of you have added to your pledge far more intuitive, we are trying to make sure the other half of the card filing system (the set icon and card code) is equally up to scratch.

We therefore think that the best decision is to proceed as follows:

Make the changes to Set Icon and Card Code to all cards except Foes as per the previous update. This will improve accessibility for all which we think is really important and alongside the Environment Icon flags make it much easier to find and store your cards. These changes are cosmetic in nature, improve readability and do not change how your existing cards from the first printing work in any way.

We will no longer update the Foes and leave them as per the version shown as at the latest improvement a while back. Please note these cards will not have the increased Set Icon and Card Code on them - there just isn't the space to accommodate this in the old format.

Here is an example of that format below - you can see it does not vary massively from your existing Foe cards.

I wanted to address a few other concerns here.

The Occupation card darkness on new card vs old
Please rest assured there is nothing to worry about on this front, we will be adjusting brightness levels in pre-press to ensure consistency across sets.

Placement of Card Code next to text on some cards (e.g. the Formori Huntsword).
The reason it looks like there is space to move the card code is because I showed you the full card plus bleed and cut marks as it would go to printer. The actual card is much smaller than this, then within that card we have a mandatory safety level that we need to abide by.  

I have cropped this export to the dieline (red) and the safety margin level (yellow). You can see we have no more space to move that Card Code down the way. We also can not easily move the text up the way away from the Card Code en masse as the master files have not been built this way. Doing this would involve complete remerges of all cards after that remaster which will add even further delays to the project. We can however - probably-  manual nudge the text up (where space permits) on a number of these card to give that floating space around the card code where desired. Please note this would be on a best endeavours basis though, there are probably a few cards in the game where there is so much information on the card we simply can not accommodate the proposed nudge.

What does this mean for my Upgrade pack?
As per Update 8 and Update 31 we will include the following:

A white tuck box (roughly A4 sized) with a barcode on it.

• 2x Readiness tracker Double poker cards
• 2x Punchboards from the Weeping Caves reprint
• 2x Punchboards from the Great Sewers reprint
• 2 replacement cards for the Caves and Sewers that have slight errors in them
• 2x replacement Adventures for the Weeping Caves set
• PDFs of the Core Rulebook
• All of the additional cards we unlocked from the Weeping Caves Enhanced Edition and Great Sewers Enhanced Edition 
• another 23* reprinted cards (covering the Caves and Sewers and Caves EE and GS EE Party Basic Tests) (see Update 31)
  
  We hope the above is clearer, please let us know if you have any questions. We need to move on with production now and believe the proposal outlined above should be the most satisfactory to the majority of you.
  
  Wishing you all the best for the New Year when it comes to you!
  
  Cheers
  IG
   

Accessibility, Foe card improvement,
over 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 28, 2024 at 02:14:32 PM

Hey folks 

Seasons Greeting to those who celebrate at this time of year!

As we are doing final changes for manufacturing I wanted to share our final accessibility tweak.

Why are we doing this?  

Feedback from the first printing was that you enjoyed many aspects of the game, particularly the exploration side but you wanted (among other things):

• more stuff (hence all the loot)
• more about the world (hence the increased Campaign Guides with the Clues system in Deepsorrow)
• less fiddly components (hence the change to tokens you will see in the punchboards)
• an easier way to learn/revise the game (hence Totackyn's Guide/Flowcharts and the 'How to Play')
• As much help as possible to read/find the cards - especially the card codes (hence this update)
  
  On the last point I have to say since we launched IG in 2016 (yep we are 8 years old now folks) my eyesight has changed considerably and I am totally onboard with upscaling font sizes wherever it is practical!
   

The last point was always something we were going to leave to the end though as we wanted to catch it in the final proof and update all cards and books accordingly. I'm pleased to say we are at that stage now. We have spent the past three weeks or so tweaking all of the cards to accommodate our final planned accessibility change. 

We have increased the Set Icon on each card by nearly 25% from 2.1mm to 2.6mm and have increased the Card Code Font by 67% from 4.5 pts to 7.5pts.

Note with the exception of Foes (further detailed below) we have not adjusted any other text on the cards as there is simply not the real estate or the time to do so. The Foes were a special case as of course you will be fighting them many times and because of other changes to the game (like the introduction of the Battlefield and Creature tokens) we have been able to figure out a better way of doing those cards.

Note this has been a material amount of work because of all the different card templates we use in LU. I will endeavour to demonstrate the changes below with 'old vs new' pictures.

This is an example of a Booby Trap card from the Sewers Enhanced Edition below - note how much easier it is to see the card icon and code:

For Events we have opened the Legendary Effect box to become full bleed now (in effect a hanging framed golden cloth/parchment) as we do with some of our other card types. This makes the Card Code far more visible and actually makes the Sewer Environment on the right far easier to see also.

For Loot we have again continued with the open parchment technique to gain the same accessibility benefits. This card here is pretty full and shows well why we can not increase the font size any further on any theme text. We asked you about this a while back and the feedback we received before was 'better to have it even if small rather than not at all'.

For Occupations note we have tweaked the card frame slightly to make it more visible and also you can see the impact of the suggested starting build on the right (I have only shown the bottom part of each card here).

And for Outfits the change is relatively straight forward.

Foes
Note for this section the data should be the same on both cards, we just wanted to show you an update of the Foe redesign card and have not input all the data yet.

We took a slightly different approach with Foe cards as it is quite clear when you are in Combat you really want to be able to read those cards as easily as possible, and some of the new rules we have introduced were really using up the limits of the space we had available from the original design.

We had already listed various iterations of the Foe card we have been making during this kickstarter. To the left you can see a card which looks similar to but not identical to the original Foe format you had with the first printing of Weeping Caves and Great Sewers.

To the right we have managed to improve the font size materially.  The additional space we have taken for the text meant we therefore had to solve for getting the horizontal information added to the column to the left. This also let us add a few improvements we wanted to so that it is even simpler to read the card.

The markup below explains what we mean here - the old card on the left has all the same data points as the new card but you crisscross up and down the card to find the data point you need. The new card on the right has everything in simple logical order. Also graphically there are a couple of improvements going on here:

The Health icon has been changed to a small red heart which matches the hard coded heart on each Creature token making it more intuitive as to what it refers to.

We have used different shades for Melee and Ranged to hit and damage so it is really clear what refers to what.

Other cards
We are working on the other card types (mostly the test cards - basic, staged, table) just now in parallel with final proofing.

I want to share with you an update on punchboard changes and books next time (all of which are required to make sure Whatz can fit the components and inserts into those boxes).

For now though we hope you can look forward to being able to read and find those cards more easily as we complete this final accessibility tweak.

Wishing you all the best.

Cheers

IG

V3 Dividers (missing pics), Battlefield Prototype, Pots & Preps Punchboard, BackerKit funds charging, timeline update
over 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 07, 2024 at 09:28:37 AM

Hi folks,

here is another photo heavy update for you, usual caveats about my photography skills!

Dividers
In the last update I mentioned that some of the Dividers had been missed out of the print run accidentally. For the completionists among you (can't just be me...) here are the ones that were missed out:

Weapons Dividers for Caves, Sewers, Deepsorrrow, Pots & Preps and the new NB1/NB2 combined Divider:

Weapon Talents for Caves, Sewers, Deepsorrrow, Pots & Preps NB1 and NB2:

Resource Mineral, Deepsorrow Relic, Shock

I was looking through previous comments from you all and remembered there was an excellent suggestion about incorporating a 'save game' for your characters which I wanted to get back to when we were closer to production. A big thanks to you for this (Martina I think but I can't seem to find the comment now).  So here is a new Saved Characters Tab we have added to the V3 Dividers set:

In this photo here I have deliberately left the Occupation card in portrait orientation so you can see the character save.

It's still here behind the talent cards when you turn it into Landscape orientation.

A note on Dividers and inserts
Apologies for any confusion caused in the last update. To keep it simple - if you have added the Deepsorrow set to your pledge somewhere it will come with the improved Insert we are finalising which will let you store all your novice set cards (from all the sets) in it - you don't need to do anything else.

The V3 Dividers are also just an iteration of the original card dividers after we have tried them out with prototypes and taken feedback from you all. Roughly half of you have added Dividers to your pledge via either your bonus option (depending on your pledge) or as an add on. If you have Dividers on your pledge then the V3 Dividers are the ones you will receive.

I believe I have dealt with all outstanding queries regarding Dividers, if you are waiting on us for a response please do get in touch.

Battlefield

We have had a working protoype for the Battlefield in play for some time, many of you have seen it at conventions. Now that we are prepping for print we can share the remaining Battlefields we have made. As a reminder, here is the one you have seen to date:

And here is a locally printed version of it (note on 300 gsm paper rather than card, the final version will be on card as above). What's the difference?  Look in the corners at the bottom, you can see the Weeping Caves Set icon (bottom left) and the Caves Environment icon (bottom right) so you know which set they sit in:

Which leads to...us sharing the Great Sewers Battlefield for the first time. I'm really chuffed with this one, it is perhaps one of the most action driven rooms in all of the cards across the sets. I would be lying if I didn't say I have been moving my Hero and Foe tokens up and down those walkways a few times over the past days...research and all that!

And so on to Deepsorrow - we wanted to let you use a different room in these sets to mix it up a bit - so you can see the Cave Art room in this card - note the Set icon in the bottom left. 

This Board would flip over and give you the Deepsorrow Sewers Battlefield where you can fight over barrels, benches and a whole manner of things for those shiny crystals...

Potions & Preps Punchboard
Note the reverse of this board whereby we show the reverse of the Apothecary and Gemcutter for the first time in token form:

By printing locally we can try stuff out quickly and iterate. What became apparent to me pretty quick was that the neutral blue/grey background on the Hero tokens works absolutely fine on the Caves Battlefields which are a warm orange/brown  palette:

But much less so on the greens and blues of the Sewers Battlefield. You can see below where they are less visible that the higher contrast Sewer Serpents. Also note this photo is taken under the intense light of a lightbox, not normal table gaming lighting conditions by any means.

We want to fix this for you while we have the opportunity:

So with that in mind we have upped the size of the Hero tokens and changed the background on them to give more ontrast: You can see the difference of old vs new Hero tokens below - much easier to see your heroes in the fight!

Of course you need to be able to use those heroes in any environment so it needs to work in the caves too hence why we have not gone for too warm a tone - you can see how it works here:

And finally while trying out the Deepsorrow Sewers Battlefield for the first time  I noted that you can only fit one Hero or Foe in a Ranged position in the corridor and the rest look like they would need to be in the walls (see below).  Whilst this is abstracted, and some would perhaps just leave it and move on, it most definitely bugs me so we have already recropped that one for the final.

BackerKit funds charging
For those that have added things to BackerKit or pre-orders etc. (some of you a few months back) I have been holding off from charging until we are nearly ready to go. Now is that time and I will be pushing the button over the weekend on those funds, so just a heads up really as I know some of you were asking.

Timeline update
Hopefully you can see we are making massive progress on the final points.
The Sewers Campaign Guide was proofed the other day - thanks so much Vern!
We are doing tickback on punchboards as you can see.
The Content Almanacs are being updated to make sure they are set specific.
When we finalised Totackyns Guide (the flowcharts) we spotted one thing in the Scouting section which only happens in edge cases if you choose to remain in the same Location. We have updated that in the guide and are adding it into the Core Rules also to improve that for you.

Remaining things are updated packaging (which is being done right now), inserts (WIP - awaiting .stls) and for us to do a final proof of the Deepsorrow Campaign Guide.

We are running hard at it - I want these files away in December 2024. 

I will keep you posted but please let me get some files back from Whatz before I give you a date and then we need to revise it again.

Wishing you all the best.

Cheers
IG