Design Diary 2 (Patreon)

Happy April Humblechums!

Spring is springing here in Ottawa! April brought us the last hurrah of winter, but now things are warming up (let's just ignore the small amount of snow that fell today.)

New Art! 

We’re in the middle of a new art cycle—always super exciting for the whole team! Once the writers have come up with their concepts and written art descriptions, we hand them over to Brian. He finds the artists and shepherds them through the process until we have the final piece. There’s usually lots of back-and-forth between the writers and Brian to make sure everything lines up between the words and the pictures in the final book.

This time around, we’re focusing on the locations and the new character options we’ve locked in for the book. Some of these you’ve already seen in the playtest and some are things we’ll be testing out later in the year.

Preliminary sketches of Firnveldt by Josiah Cameron

Focus on Classes and Subclasses!

Jordan and Verity have each been working on a new subclass recently. We divide up the work and then meet to discuss it and give each other feedback. For Humblewood 2, we want to make sure the new subclasses are really tied into the lore we’re exploring. We call this “folding in the cheese.” (There is a lot of talk about cheese in our meetings.)

Jordan has been working on the Way of the Wrangler Monk, which ties into the grasslands of Firnveldt, and Verity has been noodling on the Oath of Mysteries Paladin that will be in next month’s playtest.

Sketches of a Rockburrow Paladin by Emory Kjelsberg

The writing team has also been reworking the fizzar class. We’ve listened to your feedback and we’re trying out a different approach to our take on the artificer. This time we’re focusing on giving players the tools to build their own gadgets more flexibly. We’re also trying to simplify the system quite a bit. If you haven’t filled out the feedback form for the fizzar, there’s still time!

Humblewood Comic

The Humblewood Comic ‘For Want of a Nail’ written by Gail Simone and illustrated by Sarah Webb is nearing completion! We’ve been eagerly checking out the sketches for the final issue, and we’ve got big plans for a special collected edition including some extra game material. 

In-progress inks of Humblewood: For Want of a Nail issue 8 by Sarah Webb, written by Gail Simone

Floral Dragons!

We’re a pretty small team over here at Hit Point Press, so everyone has been putting a lot of time into our other projects this month. With the Field Guide to Floral Dragons Kickstarter running and the team aiming to have everything ready to roll as soon as the campaign closes, we’ve been writing blurbs and product descriptions, triple-checking the PDF version of the book, and generally freaking out that the campaign is going so well! 

Our graphic designer Madison is currently building out all the packaging for things like the box sets and jigsaw puzzle. Victoria is sculpting the stretch goal minis, and they are looking so cool! And that’s not to mention all the work that our Operations and Support team do behind the scenes! 

Floral Dragons is our first Kickstarter to use our new project model, and was born right here on Patreon. We’re really happy with how it is going! Seeing how the lessons we’ve learned from other projects like Heckna and Big Bads are working on this project is very cool.

HPP Tunes

We’ve got another playlist of what the team has been bopping to in April. Check it out for an excellent song about necromancy, some fey vibes, and some chillhop among other things!