A Big Shipping Update + news on the book!
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Jun 02, 2017 at 01:19:35 AM
All,
First, over a dozen folks in the US have had last minute address changes. Some we didn't discover until they were already in the mail. If you recently moved, and believe you didn't change your address in time in our system, please email support at petersengames dot com TODAY ASAP!
The shipping of the plastic sets is slowly but surely moving along. We are in the thick of it, and this means that very shortly the long nightmare will be over and everyone will have their orders! Here is a video our US fulfillment warehouse made over the holiday weekend while they worked to package your orders up:
Plastic sets still all the way fulfilled, as before.
US:
Many US orders are already out the door. Our shippers say that the last batch of US orders will be out the door on Monday, June 5th. It’s actually a little better than that – they say all orders should be packed up and ready to go by Friday, but Monday will be the next actual pickup available from the couriers. Since they couldn’t begin until Saturday, May 20th (after sorting SKUs, etc.), this means they are handling the entirety of the pick and pack in about two weeks. For a project of this scale that is quite fast!
Note that they do NOT print shipping labels until they are actually picking and packing for your box. Why does this matter? Because when the label is printed, your tracking email is generated. (For example, some fulfillment warehouses print all the labels at the beginning of the process, so you would have an email telling you its on the way, but tracking shows no movement for many days because they haven't actually even packed your order!). Our US warehouse doesn't do that, which means when you get your email, it is going to be picked up by UPS the next morning (or possibly the same day) and will actually be on its way to your home.
Also, note that to expedite shipping, some backers (though a distinct minority) are receiving two separate packages in the US. This is not the case for most orders which should get their entire order in a single box.
Canada:
Products for orders in Canada are in the process of being freighted to a Canadian fulfillment center. Because of the scale of their operations and the number of Canadian packages they are estimating that Canada backers will have all their orders in the mail by about the same time the last batch of US orders are out the door as well. It is possible US beats Canada by a day or so, but there will not be a significant difference!
EU:
Our European fulfillment center had some hiccups in their logistics and they were not able to begin last week as planned (and no, this wasn’t even related to the bad weather or lack of available trucking as explained previously, but a third issue). Ye gads, sometimes I think Nyarlathotep himself is actually cackling at me.
In any case, the first orders for EU should be going out this Friday, in two days. They should, however, be able to send it all out within a few days, once it begins (they are a big operation and fairly fast). You should be expecting tracking emails soon for EU.
Australia/NZ:
Australia is still in a bit of a conundrum. Some orders have been sent, if we have all the SKUs associated with your order. The factory made some errors in how many of each SKU they are supposed to send for each region. There were mistakes in the amount of SKUs per product in US, EU, and Australia. However, it ended up such that Australia had fewer than needed, whereas US and EU had more than they were supposed to have.
Needless to say, this has been an additional bonus problem our shipping manager James has had to deal with.
Now that the US container and EU containers are fully unloaded and counted, we need to freight some products from both EU and the US to Australia in order to be able to fulfill all Australia orders. That will take some time, which means many Australian backers will have to wait a few weeks until they will finally get ALL their rewards.
However, given the delays you've already experienced, we are biting the bullet and sending you partial rewards right now. This will cost us more, but we feel it is worth it to get even a few of your products sooner, rather than have to wait for well over a month to get anything. I will update you when the remaining product arrives in Australia from US and EU, and you will get your remaining SKUs.
If you have any issues at all, please email support at petersengames dot com. But be patient, as James simultaneously handles customer support as well as shipping, and right now he is very busy. He should get back to you in a timely manner, but it may take more than a day.
What about the book?
Our copy editors are working to deliver the entirety of the book on June 15th. When that happens, I will make an update just for backers in which I will share the book's text with you. You will therefore be able to read it, though without the art and layout.
As soon as the layout is done we will of course share it with you immediately as well.
Brain Cylinder #83.7.1
Miniature sets have escaped customs + a long expected book update!
almost 7 years ago
– Tue, May 16, 2017 at 11:34:28 PM
All,
US/Canada
We have good news for the Americas. The plastic sets are out of US customs!
We have been told that 2 of the 4 containers will arrive at our fulfillment facility on Thursday at 9am, and the other 2 will be there Friday morning.
Our fulfillment center says it will be able to unload all by Friday evening. Then, they will count and sort on Saturday. Due to picking and packing, I don't expect the first orders to be able to go out until a few days later; I will update when I know they are actually in the mail to your homes.
Europe
The European fulfillment center will receive one container tomorrow and the remaining two on Thursday. They estimate that the European region orders will be going out the door by the middle of next week.
If you are also
a backer on our Cthulhu Wars: Onslaught 2 Kickstarter your order from that project will be combined with this one in the mail.
What about the Book?
I don't want to do an update without mentioning the book's recent great progress.
It has taken many months longer than we initially anticipated but as of yesterday ALL OF THE DEVELOPMENT IS 100% COMPLETE!
There are no rules, lore or flavor text left to be written, and there is no art left to do (actually, the art has been done for several weeks). Over the past 7 weeks we also enlisted the help of David N. Ross to tidy up several sections that needed rules clarifications, additional content and general Pathfinder-ness added. But that is now complete, meaning that every section can go to editing. This has resulted in a few small additions we didn't even anticipate, let alone show in our many stretch goals. I'll let you discover them on your own. They will be nice little surprises, like finding the Yellow Sign...
We have two professional editors tackling each chapter right now. It is industry standard for a role-playing book to have every section double checked, meaning both editors actually see the entire book. This means it does take a little longer, as you cannot split the chapters up. (I am trying to speed it up as much as I can by having each one take half the chapters for the first pass, and then swapping, but will still stagger them anyway to get to layout one by one).
I have spoken to our layout professional and our plan is to provide to you PDF downloads of each chapter as they are finished (and then, the whole book as a single file when it is done). I will likely put the single chapter downloads in backer only updates.
I am hesitant to provide a public timeline for the moment, due to our delays and incorrect predictions in the past. However, we have an internal timeline that the editors and layout person are shooting for. It will hopefully not be long when I can feel confident in the team's process and pattern to announce when we expect it to really be done.
- Brain Cylinder #83.7.1
Your Plastics Orders
almost 7 years ago
– Wed, May 10, 2017 at 10:05:47 PM
All,
You guys unlocked a lot of stuff during this campaign! It's so much stuff, that we've been getting some questions and comments about orders.
No matter what pledge level and add-ons you got, if you ordered $50+ of products (before shipping costs), you will be getting the single high priest (unpainted) -
$100 Level
No matter what pledge level and add-ons you got, if you ordered $100+ of products (before shipping costs), you will be getting the painted gate, monster deck (of bestiary stat blocs), and the special horde collection (unpainted):
this will ship with the book
Newsletter Signup
If you were part of our secret cabal BEFORE the Kickstarter started (by having signed up to our newsletter), AND you pledged $35+ (no matter the pledge level or add-ons), then you are getting the Glow in the Dark Elder Thing:
And yes, all of these things stack together; so, you get the high priest at the $100 level as well.
Of course, we unlocked loads of other plastic related stretch goals, but they served to add more miniatures to the various campaign collections; adventure kits; and horde packs. So, you would get them as part of whatever sets you ordered.
Hope this helps to clarify when you get your package in the mail!
And no, US customs has not yet released our products in Seattle. We are in disbelief, frankly. Apparently, there has recently been criminal activity with adding drugs to containers being imported in Florida. Since our containers are on the furthest point in the continental US from Florida (in Seattle, Washington), it stands to reason that they would be inspecting things up there as well, right?
EDIT:
Just got word that they are "still in the process of their inspection. We are pending their release to reload the cargo back into the containers." Previously they didn't include words like "pending their release to reload" so, that's a little different, and hopefully good news!
