Free cards added to Novice Booster set 2, a wee bit of world building
9 months ago – Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 07:34:05 AM

Hi all,

The art is back and the cards are built! 

I am pleased to show you the results of the recent competition we ran to add some additional Foes to A Trove of Treasures - Novice Booster 2. 

Before I do that though let me just explain a few real world publisher reasons why we are doing this. 

• Firstly when we shared the Novice Booster 2 Set with you we said we would tweak it to add in an additional punchboard and a card or two to use the space inside the box better but also give you more fun with your game. 
• Secondly as I have been iterating away the box dividers and insert for Deepsorrow it became apparent there was only one Discovery in Novice Booster 2 (The Skinwail Hunter) and it seems kind of crazy to have a card divider for just one Discovery card.

A wee bit of world building

Here is the box for A Trove of Treasures. You can see the Skinwail Hunter on the front cover.

The Skinwail Hunter is a tough warrior for hire from Innis Mannin, an island based people of the Celti culture renowned for their seafaring skills and fearless approach to combat. They lead a hard life, building strong houses and foraging in the sea caves to survive the storms that lash the coast of their large island (to the east of Pen Caergan on the map).

The Mannin are intended to play a greater role in the campaign in future sets. For now it will suffice to know that the Hunters make their living dealing with the horrors that lurk in the sea beyond the straits to the north of Dun Mordhain.

Note the Skinwail Hunter is not alone on her travels, that would be a lonely and dangerous career choice (even by Legends Untold standards), she is accompanied by her white haired apprentice, who has saved her life on many occasions.

The Skinwails will be revealed at a later stage we hope! For now however we think having just the one card behind that divider is a bit daft so we have added in a new Encounter for you to deal with - here is a brand new card the Serpent's Lair which will be included in this set for free:

For those that are really good at dealing with snakes there is a chance to draw from the Treasure Deck here.

As part of the project to design new Foes we got some ideas from you - thanks for those! We have tried to incorporate them where we can, whilst also ensuring the lore remains intact and faces off to the grand campaign.

Our first new Foe Card is a shout out to our Lich obsessed Peter 'Apple Head' Andersson. For those that have been with us since the start you may remember that the Liches in Mor Nadar are known by the Celti Peoples as the Dia Fir (God-Men) and are truly ancient by the standards of the current inhabitants of Mor Nadar. It is our hope that in the Ancient Crypts section of the planned Apprentice sets we can share more of the Dia Fir (you would need to level up a few more times to stand a chance against them).  If you look at this video I did way back in the first campaign, from around the 4 minute mark you can see three different types of undead described conceptually, with the Dia Fir shown in more detail:

For now though we thought is might be cool to share a Dia Fir Servant that had been buried with its master - who knows when it will surface! In essence we are giving you a bit of 'lichyness' with your new booster set - good luck to all those low Will heroes out there!

Next up we have another monster from the sewers. Nobody is entirely sure how these creatures arrived there. Some say they are sacred pets from the Mayteca peoples that escaped the homes of the ambassadors in Dun Mordhain and fled to the sewers below. Others believe that just like the water horses  of the lakes and lochs all around the Cold Lands they have been their forever. Whatever you believe a big thank you to Martina Ottens for the suggestion.  Note (like all these cards) we need to play the Albigator a few more times, at 3 Health and 2 Wounds with the Death Roll it may just be a bit too brutal, but saying that, we do always recommend that you need to run away now and again in Legends Untold...

Third up I would like to thank Vern 'Targanth' for his Stalag-Fight suggestion. Like so many of you Vern has always been incredibly supportive of the Legends Untold project and we wanted to find a way of making his creature design work alongside our existing Stalag-Ent card that sits in Deepsorrow. To this end we have created a high Alertness value Creature that does extra Damage in the Engagement Round to represent a deadly surprise attack from what you thought was just a harmless wee bunny... (ahem sorry stalagmite).  We are pleased to introduce Targanth's Terror into the lore of Mor Nadar: 

Finally a personal favourite of Kev's, created when we were writing the background for the Initiate Occupation. Deep beneath Firesorrow Temple there are caves full of water that team with life in the warm habitat.  The tough shells of the little cowries mean they have very few predators but there is one, the Cowrie Hunter, armed with long poisonous tentacles and a vicious tongue it feasts on the little snails and anything else that enters its lair. Sometimes though an Initiate will be brave enough to undertake an initiation test and fight such a foe to recover some of those shells. If they do so and present their findings to the Masters they are rewarded with their cowrie bracelet charm which they can keep forever and use to channel their energy when they need it most.

Please note - I want to get this update out to you all now but have just noticed this Foe has the Sewer Environment tag in the bottom right - this will be changed to a Cave one of course.

I want to give a shout out to our amazing creature artist Daniel for the job he did on these 5 pieces.

In summary folks we will add these five cards for free to every copy of A Trove of Treasures - Novice Booster 2 alongside the punchboard that is required for the various Creature tokens.

We hope you like the new cards!

What's next?

In terms of the rest of the project we are working away on the Deepsorrow insert, awaiting the art for the final few Location cards that we are adding to the Enhanced Edition, and assembling everything for proofing. If anyone is willing to volunteer to read a few pages of some of the books please do let us know, many eyes make the job much quicker and will help up improve the product for everyone. 

Best wishes to you all.

Cheers

IG

BackerKit action needed now, Dividers, Box storage, Booster cards, Foes
10 months ago – Fri, Jun 30, 2023 at 08:51:10 AM

Hi folks,

BackerKit Survey - locking and chargin this weekend

I sent a final reminder out today, please make any changes you want to now. We will be locking orders and charging cards over the weekend.

Currently there are just over 200 of you who will not be able to receive their rewards.

Dividers

I have now had a chance to use the dividers properly and attach lots of photographs for you all to see - please note everything remains subject to change, we had to cut a few corners to get things printed for UKGE!

Shrink wrapped dividers for the poker sized cards:

Barriers and Obstacles:

• A reminder on how to read from top left: Set icon, Deck icon, Card Type, Environment
• So in this case from top to bottom the dividers are for filing Deepsorrow Sewer Environment cards, Deespsorrow Caves Environment cards, Great Sewers cards, Weeping Caves cards.

Events and Personas - top left Set icon is for Novice Booster 2 - A Trove of Treasures:

Plot, Campaign, and Clue Cards:

Foes and Discoveries:

• Topmost Set Icon is Novice Booster 1. Note we have been debating having some Great Sewers and Weeping Caves Foes as 'Any' rather than for Sewers and Caves. It sounded good on paper but when you get into the filing of it, it is arguably a bit of a faff. Still to be decided this one.
• Note the Deepsorrow Environment icon on the third Foe divider from top - for the 'purple cards' I mentioned during the campaign. 

I could not reduce the light glare in the above shot - here is a better look at the Foes Dividers:

And the Discoveries:

Booby Traps and Items - note Booby Traps and Items are deliberately 'use anywhere' to give you much more variety. The Set icons for Items from top to bottom are:

• A Cryptic Collection - Novice Booster 3
• A Trove of treasures - Novice Booster 2
• Alchemist, Druid & Treasure - Novice Booster 1
• Potions & Preparations

followed by Deepsorrow, Sewers, and Caves

Outfits and Kits: 

Weapons, Reference and Shock: 

Skill Talents and Weapon Talents: 

Resources (from Potions & Preps) and the Flask from A Cryptic Collection - note I think this card is probably unnecessary and can be filed with the potions themselves:

Preparations and Potions from the  Cryptic Collection, Pots & Preps and NB1 Set (the Alchemy part):

The Double Pokers (Locations and Occupations - also there will need to be ones for Reference and Episodes). Note these will need to be redesigned, as I mentioned in a previous update they do not quite do what they need to: 

This is me at the start of the process, swapping out all the placeholder coloured plastic ones for the new official dividers: 

And an hour or so later - this is what is looks like with all the poker Dividers replaced:

It is of course up to you how you file the cards, we have given you the flexibility to file in multiple ways. At the moment this is the way I find it easiest to find everything really quickly (with Pots & Preps stored separately in it's own box):

Here's a view from a different angle. A couple of points I would make after seeing the prototype:

• Some of the classifications are tiny, when there are only one or two cards I think combining may be less of a faff.
• It is indeed very easy to swap out categories by set or type just as we hoped.
• I personally find this far easier to find cards than without.
• I have done this on a sleeved basis, as I predicted during the Campaign it all fits except Pots & Preps. If these cards were unsleeved you would probably fit the Pots & Preps cards in too but because of the card sizes in that set I would not recommend it.
• We still have the issue around the double pokers to solve - the current solution works but is not optimal. I am working with Whatz to see what if anything can be done to improve this.
• The space that is not being take up by the cards and dividers is for counters and dice.
• The Battlefield board being placed on top with the rules on top of the dividers works but needs some form of support on the left hand side

This picture here shows the Battlefield balancing on those cards:

However you can see I have offset the weight on the books to the right to make it balance because the dividers act as an offcentre 'fulcrum' which needs some form of support on the left to balance it out.

In summary - I am really happy with the Dividers and think they will enhance the experience for many of you, especially if you have multiple sets. However there is still a wee bit more design work to go on the box to make it all fit and stable - we will come back to this!

Booster Set cards:

Note this is the first time I have seen these myself, apart from a quick look at the Cryptic Collection cards they were still mostly kept in shrink at UKGE. These all need to be proofed and have card codes updated with final set icons. We ran out of time to do this for UKGE but wanted to show people what they were getting.

This is part 1 of a Trove of Treasures, Novice Booster 2 - note the new Weapons and the additional Weapon Talents for all the existing ones.  Please note we are revising the Studded Cestus to something else, it is very hard to make it work with the sheer variety of Talents that we make available. It will be replaced by something like the 'Dirk' in due course, we are still finalising - but we want it to work with the knife based talents you can see above and the Cestus is not quite delivering what we want from it.

Part 2 of this set-  note all the 'armour' type options you can now find - greaves, helms, shields. Thank you for helping us to unlock all of this!

The cards from the Cryptic Collection - Novice Booster 3. 

In the left - The Strange Device card which seeds a random Preparation for you to identify and use.

On the right - The Unusual Flask card which seeds a random Potion for you to identify and use.

In the middle and the bottom - the Tomes leading to the Knowledge cards for the three sets (I have turned half of them over so you can see the reverses.  I'd like to give a shout out to our graphic designer Morgan for making these look like little books!

When we briefly showed people these cards at UKGE they proved to be very popular, the idea of being able to craft Potions but also to be able to find random unknown bottles etc was a big hit.

Foes

A big thanks to Vern for his contribution on the Foes on the last Update - we will be in touch to accommodate something like this. Note there is already a Foe in the Deepsorrow set called Stalag Ent, so it is unlikely we will use 'Stalag-Fight' but I am sure we can capture the concept and work with Vern to come up with something cool.

That's it for now - I hope all the photographs gives everybody a clear picture of what's happening,

Best wishes to you all!

Cheers

IG

Post UKGE Update, videos, Apothecary primer, help design a new card!
11 months ago – Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 07:21:32 AM

Hi folks,

post UKGE update

we are back from UKGE and wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who dropped by! It was so lovely to see so many faces for the first time in five years. It was particularly nice to catch up with some of you whom we demoed to way back in 2016 with our tiny little booth and handcut cards. 

Before I go any further Hugh and I would also like to extend a special thanks to the IG demo team: Eoghann, Eric, Mark, Chris and Adam for coming to the show and running numerous demos all through the weekend at the stand.

Here is an intro video from Kirsty and Phil over at Ludus Vulpes from the Press Preview on the Thursday evening:

The stand was busy all weekend and we received the following feedback from the Demos:

How much did you enjoy the game?

• Boring: 0%
• Okay: 0%
• Fun: 53%
• Great: 47%

How complex was the game to understand?

• Very simple: 8%
• Straightforward: 69%
• Complicated: 23%
• Too complex: 0%

Did the game's theme/background come through?

• Bland: 0%
• Okay: 9%
• Involving: 91%
• Deep: 0%

What do you think of the game mechanics?

• Too simple: 0%
• About right: 85%
• Complex: 15%
• Too complex: 0%

Do you think the new Deepsorrow concepts make the game better?

• No: 0%
• Hard to Say: 83%
• Yes: 7%
• Very much: 7% 

Verbatims:

• 'Really enjoyed the demo. Great game, thoroughly enjoyed it all.'
• 'Really enjoyed the demo game. Very interesting gameplay.'
• 'Really good concept, roleplaying game which is quick and simple to grasp. Very enjoyable.'
• 'Enjoyed the demo game so much I bought a copy.'
• 'Great demo!'
• 'Great improvement on an already enjoyable game!'
• 'So much fun to play.'

Feedback from the demo team:

• Other than a couple of ex demo copies we had for sale people were most disappointed that they could not purchase the game on the day.
• Crafting was a big hit, everyone really liked being able to harvest materials and then craft recipes during the game.
• People liked the new Treasure deck, being able to find significantly more loot in an adventure was popular.

Note the population of the demo participants was completely random, some had played LU before some had not.  We can only treat the feedback for what it is, but it was certainly positive and compares very favourably with previous feedback we have received at UKGE. The demo did not include the clues system but when we showed people how they worked with the Deepsorrow campaign book afterwards people then twigged that that was how they would learn more about Mor Nadar.

And finally here is a short video from Ludus Vulpes playing through the game with Kev where you can see some of the new cards being used:

Apologies, the demo tables were frantic and we had misplaced some tokens by this stage!

Battlefield and secondary Weapons

 One of our backers asked me about using secondary weapons on the Discord channel - I have made a video here, integrating it with the new Battlefield.

Apothecary Primer

Rather than a promo card we gave away an Apothecary primer at UKGE so that people who owned the game could take it home, cut it out and try out being an Apothecary with their existing sets.  If you want to try this for yourself you can download it from our website here:

 https://www.inspiringgames.com/legends-untold-download-centre/ 

I have asked the admins at BGG to approve this document as a file upload there too and will share the link when that happens.

New Free content in NB2 - Help design a new card!

We took on board the feedback from the last update that there appeared to be a little bit too much empty space in the Novice Booster 2 box. We always listen to you, however as had been suggested at the time there are two parts to the equation, the second being how this would work at retail. We spoke to two huge distributors at UKGE who both confirmed that tuck boxes are not the way to go with this product for retail. 

Therefore we are going to do what we think is the right thing for both sides here - we will retain the box size as is but add more free content for you to use which will also be an appropriate use of the air space inside.  We are going to introduce some new Foes to NB2, this will mean further poker cards and also a small punchboard the same as there is for Novice Booster 1) which will give you further creature tokens to use. 

We already have some ideas in mind, however building a world together is part of the ethos of the LU project,  therefore we are asking for your ideas to help design a Foe. Please add your concepts in the comments below and people can +1 and add their own accordingly. We will need to make any final decisions based on suitability for both lore and publishing constraints but at the moment we want you to have some fun with this! Design parameters for the Foe are as follows:

• Must be usable in either a Caves or Sewers setting.
• Ideally will use one of the following Conditions (Fear, Fire, Poison - deliberately not Shock as that is only in the Deepsorrow box). Remember Conditions work both ways in the revised rules so Foes can cause or be vulnerable to these Conditions.
• Remember Caves and Sewers is Novice Rank difficulty and Deepsorrow is akin to Novice Rank approaching Apprentice.  So anything which is hugely difficult to survive against is unlikely to be usable at this juncture.

Confirmation on BackerKit funds charging

We held off so that we could demo at UKGE and get a clearer picture on production volumes. I can now confirm we intend to collect funds via BackerKit on 30 June.

We are at 83% complete on the BackerKit. There are approximately 200 of you who have not completed the survey, please note we will not be able to ship you any rewards unless this is completed.

That's it for now folks. In the next update I will try and show some detail behind all the new prototypes we  received for UKGE.

Wishing you all the best!

Cheers

IG

Prototype shots - lots of photographs!
11 months ago – Thu, May 25, 2023 at 04:10:24 AM

Hi folks,

I'm very excited to share lots of photos of the prototypes that just arrived from the manufacturer.!

Please note these prototypes were pulled together so we could share them with you and the wider audience at UKGE. These are prototypes, incomplete, and subject to change. That being said it is very exciting to see the updated Legends Untold family of products together for the first time!

So here we go - this is the three core sets, the four expansions, and the two dice sets together.  

And here you can see the new Enhanced Edition for the Weeping Caves besides Kev's (much played) copy from the original  printing.

Our baby, growing up!

A shot beside the new Official Card Dividers - note the double poker dividers seem a bit too tall and will not be quite as square.

Note the above shots were all set on black cloth as we were trying out various stand mock ups for UKGE. I have taken some detail product shots in the lightbox for you below. There are a couple where the focus could be a bit better. Please forgive me as we get ready for UKGE!

 Novice Booster Set 1 

Front of box

Back of box (note white space will be filled with all the legal things for publication).

Inside the box

 A Trove of Treasures - Novice Booster Set 2 

Front of box

Back of box

Inside the box

 A Cryptic Collection - Novice Booster Set 3 

Front of box (note the LU logo will have better placement on the final product, this was a rushed proof to ensure delivery for UKGE).

Back of box

Inside the box

 The three Booster Sets together

Front of boxes

Bookend shot  (left of box)

Bookend shot  (right of box)

Official Card Dividers

Great Sewers Enhanced Edition

Please note the new box in landscape format only just fits inside my lightbox. I have not brushed out the edges of the lightbox as I wanted you to see it 'warts and all'.

Front of box

Back of Box

Box with punchboards on top

And then the books (not the new Campaign Guide is A4, this is the old A5 one shown here)

And then the cards on top

Here is a closer look at the Sewers punchboard obverse (note the Combat tokens for the Creatures and the Heroes).  Particularly pleased to see the Black Pudding on there :D

 And the reverse of that punchboard (now the new ghost grey Barrels to show you have exhausted a Search Zone more easily) 

And the Battlefield 

Notes on the Battlefield:

1) Previously this component was referred to as the Combat Aid. We have found as we work through the Indexed Glossary that we use 'Combat' quite a bit already and want to simplify terminology where we can. 'Combat,' 'Combat Round' make sense - Combat Aid can easily be something else - hence 'Battlefield'.

2) Playing the game over and over again as we work towards final product it became clear to me that flipping the Battlefield over to move from Ranged Foe to Melee Fee is unnecessary. Now that we have increased the size of this component to make it almost box sized (to ensure we can separate books from cards in Deepsorrow) the extra real estate enables us to just have it all on one side. You just place the Foe card to the left (Ranged Foe) or right (Melee Foe) in the white slot shown above accordingly.

This should lead to a quicker gameplay experience and less chance of knocking stuff all over the place we hope.

That's it for now, you can see things are coming together. I will post some shots of the cards in due course (after UKGE).

We will be at Stand 1-968 at UKGE next week. If you are coming please stop by and say hi!

In the meantime best wishes to you all.

Cheers

IG 

BackerKit, Card Dividers, Card Codes
about 1 year ago – Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 09:55:18 AM

Hi folks,

a quick update from us at IG.

BackerKit Survey

For those that have completed their surveys - thank you!

We managed to push the completion rate on BackerKit from 79% to 81% in the past few weeks. We still have 240 or so of you who have not completed their forms. At present we have no queries outstanding regarding pledges, if you need anything please let me know. I can also now confirm we have added PayPal as a payment method.

If you have not completed your survey please can you do so as soon as possible. We want to confirm manufacturing quantities soon.

Card Dividers

 We've spent a fair bit of time trying out configurations for the official card dividers and I'm pleased to share the prototype mock up here.

We have increased the header section a little bit as I found that the larger poker sized sleeves (I am using Fenrir sleeves to test it) work out at nearly 70mm tall when laid landscape style.

Hopefully the diagram above makes it clear how it works with or without sleeves.

Note the introduction of the new 'Native Set' icon. This means that you can quickly tell which set the cards come (in this case The Weeping Caves) and then the Environment symbol shows which Environment the cards are recommended for (Caves, Sewers, Any). 

This Environments concept is something that we have been wanting to clarify for a long time and will help you easily find and use cards that are recommended for a given environment irrespective of the native set. Note of course the usual caveat, it is your game and you can use the cards in any way you want to, this is just the way we would choose to help you explore Mor Nadar. This also helps us plan for the future in terms of other Environment types should we introduce them. 

 Our next stage is to get the Card Dividers made into a physical prototype so we can try out all this theory and show you what it looks like inside the box.

A note on Card Codes

We are introducing a tweak to the card code system. We think this will:

• make for a much better experience playing the game - enabling you to see Native set and Environment on the cards.
• make it far easier to file and find your cards again.  

We can not change all of the cards from the first printing and want to make sure they work perfectly along with the new improved system. Therefore to ensure this works we have retained the original set icons that sat to the left of the WC and GS sets card codes.

We have also tweaked the Card Codes in Deepsorrow and in any new cards going forward so that a Card Code now matches the Set Symbol which we think will be far more intuitive for everyone. So if you look at the old and new format of the Flowstone Curtain card from the Deepsorrow prototype below you can see:

On the left in the old format card code (as used in the current prototype we showed) we used the Deepsorrow Set icon and then a Weeping Caves card code (WC) to show you it belongs with other caves cards.

In the new format card code we have used a Deepsorrow Set icon and card code (ID) to show that it comes from the Illumination of Deepsorrow set. We have then introduced a new 'Caves Environment' symbol on the pennant to the bottom right which shows that this card is recommended for use in a Caves Environment. Note the symbol and pennant colour matches that shown on the divider mock up above.

You will also note that the original Arcane Theory card shown above (in front of the Card Divider) does not of course have the pennant.  This is fine, for two reasons - firstly all cards from the original first printing of Weeping Caves and Great Sewers can be assumed to have a Native Set icon of Caves and Sewers respectively unless stated otherwise.

Secondly please note that we will not be putting pennants on any of the Hero related cards (Occupations, Weapons, Outfits, Kits, Talents) as they are not relevant (see the Weapons divider card below). 

Note also that some cards will have the 'Any' pennant, for example Booby Traps (shown above), which are recommended for use in any Environment.

Finally we are also looking into the font and symbol size of the Card Codes to try and bump them up a bit for you to make them easier to see.

I hope that is clear, all of the cards you have at the moment and all of the new cards you receive will work perfectly well in the new system. 

We will be back with another update in a few weeks before we head off to UKGE for the first time in five years!

In the meantime we wish you all the best.

Cheers

IG