Quickstart out now
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 02, 2021 at 04:34:46 PM

Just a quick one - you should have received an email from Backerkit altering you to a new download. It's the Spire Quickstart, which contains a cut-down version of the core rules, a short adventure called SNUFF OUT THE SUN which involves messing with a Solar Pantheon Ascension ceremony, and six pre-generated characters which you could use in pretty much any game you'd like.

If you didn't get an email, try logging into Backerkit and checking your downloads - and if that doesn't work, drop an email to [email protected] and we'll get you sorted.

That's all for now. Magister's Guide soon!

- Grant

Conspiracy Kit! Updated Sin! Golden Serpent!
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 06, 2021 at 11:55:40 PM

Okay, here's some news:

CONSPIRACY KIT RELEASED ON BACKERKIT. If you want to learn more about parasite conspiracies, and build your own organisation of desperate fools and cruel manipulators for your players to mess around with, then you should be able to access it from your Backerkit downloads. Feel free to discuss who your favourite NPC is on the Discord. Personally I'm a big fan of Cacophony Gryndel.

UPDATED SIN ALSO RELEASED ON BACKERKIT. We've done a few corrections graciously identified by our readers - nothing too major - but we've also put in the Assassination Target and Cult of Personality that we missed out of the first version. You can download the new file from Backerkit if you want to learn more about The Arrival, a mysterious play about a mysterious play which has the power to quite literally destroy Spire. 

THE GOLDEN SERPENT GOES AWAY AND THEN COMES BACK AGAIN. We had to cut the Cult of the Golden Serpent from the game for space reasons. However we're going to release it as a free PDF available to everyone, so you can still use it in your games. And spread it around, if you'd like! It's on backerkit, and also on our website here.

Updates on the rest of the project:

- Magister's Guide is laid out and Quickstart is text complete, going to editors next week or so

- Worldwide printing and distribution situation is still godawful

That's all for now.  Enjoy the new stuff!

- Grant

Sin PDFs distributed through Backerkit
over 2 years ago – Sat, Oct 16, 2021 at 02:49:24 AM

As mentioned earlier this week, we have sent out the PDFs for Sin through Backerkit. You should have received an email (from Backerkit) alerting you to the existence of new downloads - from there you can log in and read the PDFS.

(There's also a link to high-quality images of the four maps in the book, too.)

If you didn't get an email, try logging into Backerkit and accessing your downloads directly. If THAT doesn't work, you can email us at [email protected] and we'll sort you out.

Just to make things clear - we have not yet finished the Conspiracy Kit, the Magister's Guide or the Quickstart. The Conspiracy Kit should be the next thing you receive once we've got it through the final editing pass. We'll post another update as and when that happens.

- Grant, Chris, Maz and Mina

Sin PDF released TOMORROW
over 2 years ago – Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 02:22:43 AM

Hello!

Good news, everyone: the PDF for Sin will be released tomorrow.

We'll be charging everyone's cards on Backerkit, so make sure that your payment details are up to date. (We won't be closing pre-orders for a few weeks yet, but we need to charge cards now to make sure that we don't accidentally give the game away for free.)

You should receive an email from Backerkit alerting you to new downloads tomorrow. If you don't receive anything, you should be able to log in to Backerkit and download the files directly. If you can't do that, please email us at [email protected] and we'll get you sorted out.

We're all dead excited to show you Sin. It's so bloody good.

In other news:

- Conspiracy Kit is in editing stages and will be ready soonish

- Magister's Guide is deliciously close to being text-complete; Grant (i.e. the man writing this update referring to himself in the third person) has been smashing his brain against a hot google doc for a month now and it's all Good Stuff, just finishing up the last non-mechanical bits

- We've got the scenario sketched out for the Quickstart, and it involves a Counterfeit Bishop, so that's nice isn't it

- The global supply chain is still a Hot Mess

That's all for now. Tomorrow! Make ready! Yes!

- Grant, Chris, Maz and Mina

PRODUCTION UPDATE: GOOD AND BAD NEWS
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 05:21:58 AM

This update comes from Mary, who's in charge of logistics:

Good news first: we're making really good headway with the digital versions of your books, and we're really happy with how they're looking. Mina has finished her first pass on Sin and we're going through it now, making edits and getting it ready for you to receive. With that in mind: if you've not already completed your survey and told us what name you'd like in the credits, now's the time, as we'll be finalising that list on Wednesday - please do check on Backerkit if you're unsure. 

While you're at it, it's worth noting that we'll lock orders about a week before we're ready to send out your PDFs. We're aiming for that to happen on or near October 15 - so you've got about another two weeks to edit your order manually. We won't be charging cards for any add-ons till we're ready to ship, but after that date it'll be harder for you to edit your order.

The bad news: international shipping and production is very badly broken. There are international shortages of various things, including - importantly, from our perspective - cardboard; we're seeing big fluctuations in paper prices and availability, which our printers have told us might affect our ability to print to the original schedule. They described it as "unprecedented". But, assuming we can solve that problem, the bigger issue is likely to be shipping. Our fulfillment providers on both sides of the Atlantic are warning us about delays both to freight shipping and to local deliveries; there are four pinch points where things can either become delayed or get more expensive, and currently most people in the industry are reporting problems in all four places. The entire publishing industry is currently warning there may be no new books for the rest of the year; the price of shipping a container has, in some places, gone up to 5x what it was before this snarl began; we are a tiny player very much at the mercy of a complicated ecosystem of supply and demand that is, by all accounts, convulsing wildly in the wake of huge, repeated shocks.

All that's by way of saying: we're not sure if we can still get your books to you by December. We're not saying it's impossible, but we're not in a position where we can confidently make predictions about how the next three months will shake out, and most of the potential problems here are outside of our control. The biggest single risk would be if we rushed to make our original deadline and ended up many times over budget, so it's important for us to tell you that we might have to make some pragmatic decisions to take a slower but cheaper production process, and generally we'd prefer to sacrifice on speed than on quality, or on our commitments to sustainable materials. 

So we'd rather warn you now, up front, so that you're aware of the challenges and the uncertainty we're facing, and you can make whatever decisions make sense for you personally in the midst of it all. If you need or want to change your pledge, drop me an email ([email protected]) and I'll do my best to help you out.

- Mary (also Chris, Grant, Mina etc)