Are you ready to fight the nefarious cult?
over 5 years ago – Mon, Nov 05, 2018 at 09:16:50 PM

Essen

After assembling from every corner of Europe, for Essen, the DDP team has dispersed back across the continent. If you stopped by to talk to us during the convention - thankyou. We really love meeting all of you. Perspectives on Essen vary from year to year and between different demographics. This year, for the most part, publishers and consumers alike seem to be agreed that it wasn’t as good as some other recent years. That wasn’t the case for us though.

We arrived with stock of our newest game, Darwinning!, as well as early copies of the revised edition of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift and the new, boxed, Perdition’s Mouth: The Hideout expansion and set up six tables for running demo’s. Those tables were busy throughout the conventions - at times we were forced to show off future products, like Dwarf and the miniatures for Perdition’s Mouth: Cannibal’s Howl, on our sales counter, as the only available level surface. More than that, though, everyone really enjoyed their games and we were happy with the level of sales.

Shipping Update

What about your game though? We’re happy to report good progress on that front. The ship carrying the copies of the revised edition of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift and the other new content, to the EU, docked in Germany last week. Happy Shops, our EU distribution partner is very busy right now, dealing with all of the other post-Essen releases but we’re hopeful that they’ll begin to dispatch your games as soon as the German customs authority release them.

The ships carrying your games to our US and Australian distribution partners are both due to dock within the next fortnight and both companies know that you expect to receive your games before the holiday season.

We’re frustrated, as you must be, that we missed our October shipping target and hope you can forgive us now that it’s nearly out of our hands and into yours.

DDP on Tour

On 15th December, Timo, Tiinaliisa and Väinö Multamäki will open the door to their home, and sleep in a proper bed, for the first time since 20th January. You can read about their latest exploits, in Spain, in Tinsku’s ‘blog. In the meantime, there are two conventions left this year that we’re booked into and you can meet us at SpielWiesn, in Munich, and at DAU, in Barcelona.

Cannibal’s Howl

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve been encouraged to revisit Mogba’gh and we’ll be launching the Kickstarter this Saturday. We really do try to listen to you though, so this will be more than simply a reprint.

Perdition’s Mouth: Cannibal’s Howl will include a new Mogba’gh miniature, more detailed and more robust than the old one. It will also include new scenarios, new mechanisms, unique enemy markers and, if we hit our stretch goals, new maps. This is an adventure that will take place in Mogba’gh’s homeland and, therefore, will have some outdoor maps, paving the way for Perdition’s Mouth: Soul Spire, which will largely be overland adventures. The scenarios themselves will be primarily aimed at playing with one or two heroes. This is a design space we’ve only explored in a limited fashion so far (there are a few one and two character scenarios spread across the revised edition and the new version of The Hideout) and should appeal to solo players and people who prefer to play two-player games.

Given all of this new content, we’re not going to be able to provide upgrade kits for owners of Mogba’gh. Thanks to the new miniature mould, the only ‘old’ content is Mogba’gh’s hero cards. If, however, you’re happy with your existing miniature and you’re not interested in any of the new content we hope to unlock through stretch goals, we will provide copies of the new scenarios that use maps from the basegame as pdf downloads, free, to all backers who ask for them.

We hope to see you over on the Perdition’s Mouth: Cannibal’s Howl Kickstarter page on 11/11/18 at 11:11am PST (5.11pm UTC).

Lee and the DDP team.

Perdition’s Mouth: Pacific Rift
over 5 years ago – Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 01:17:21 AM

We left you hanging after the last update. We said there was something we were unhappy about and we’d let you know more about it once we’d found a solution. Well, we have now found a solution. Before we get to that, though, we have more bad news to share.

We have shipping issues for North America, as the burgeoning trade war between the USA and China heats up. Freight charges for ships from China to USA ports have tripled from last year (Kickstarter time). After much hunting around, we’ve managed to find a ship leaving for Jacksonville, FL, for which the fees have merely doubled. We think we’ve got this covered but we wanted to talk about this now because there’s a risk of more to come, as talk of a tax on toys from China comes to reality. As yet, we still don’t know if this will apply to boardgames. If it does, we may have to hold out our begging caps again.

So, finally, on to some better news - the games for the EU and Australia are on the boat. Those for the US are packed in a container (a whole container!) and are at the port, due to leave this week. Barring pirates and natural disasters (and the sort of thing discussed above) we’re in to the stage where nothing else should get in the way of your game reaching you as promised. We even managed to get some games onto a train from China to Germany - so we will have copies in Essen (booth 2C103, if you’d like to come and say hello)! There’s more detail about this in Tiinaliisa’s latest ‘blog post.

As for resolving the issue alluded to in the last update, I’m pleased that we can now reveal both the problem and the solution we’ve agreed with our manufacturing partner. Basically, we weren’t happy with an aspect of the final production miniature quality. For most people, this probably won’t even be something you notice - it’s just not what we were expecting and, coming on top of everything else, we felt let down.

The miniatures in the revised edition of Perdition’s Mouth are made out of a slightly softer plastic than in the original edition. We’ve checked with Ukko Kaarto, who some of you may recognise as the professional miniature painter that painted our miniatures for the Traitor Guard expansion and who is painting the victim minis for this campaign (for those that requested it), and he’s assured us that this won’t affect painting the miniatures in any way. So the only issue is that some of the miniatures may arrive in a slightly bent condition - on balance, perhaps better than arriving broken! These can easily be ‘de-bent’ in hot water and we’ve written instructions for how to do this which will be included in every copy of the game. We’re also going to film a video and post it on our YouTube channel for those of you who haven’t done this before and aren’t confident about doing it.

The final part of the solution we agreed with the manufacturer is that, in addition to the ‘de-bending instructions’, each copy of the revised edition will ship with an extra Tharnix and an extra Chi’leen miniature. We hope that goes some way to making up for everything.

Finally - thanks to those of you who took the time to vote in the polls on BGG that we linked to in the last update. Your responses have been really helpful and have helped give us the confidence to plan a small Kickstarter campaign for Mogba’gh which we’re pencilling in for 11th November and calling ‘Perdition’s Mouth: Cannibal’s Howl’. Should you wish to help us realise that project, we’ll gladly accept any help and advice. You can contact us via email: [email protected].

If you’re looking for some way to pass the time while you wait for that, you may be interested to know that Hit Points Gaming have started a playthrough of an entire Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift campaign on their YouTube channel.

Lee and the DDP team.

How you can help us
over 5 years ago – Sun, Sep 02, 2018 at 03:27:51 PM

This update is not about Perdition's Mouth, per se, but about specific needs for our team right now - if we were a traditional company then you might think of them as vacancies but, of course, we're unpaid. If you're not interested in joining our team, you might still want to consider subscribing to one or more of our mailing lists. We use these project-specific mailing lists to keep you up to date you on our progress, upcoming Kickstarters, etc. By keeping our mailing lists specific to different projects, rather than having them company wide, you can be sure that the information you receive is relevant to your interests.

We currently have the following lists:

• Perdition’s Mouth
  
• Trick-taking games (Black Hat & Darwinning!)
  
• Solo games
  
• Singularity Sky adventure game
  
• B-to-B information
  

As per EU regulations, you’ll need to add yourself to every list separately, so your consent is clear.

If you think you might be interested in helping us out, then read on. Otherwise, you can stop here and know that we'll have another Perdition's Mouth ready update very soon.

Dragon Dawn Productions (DDP) aims to be a recognized international team of passionate board game creators producing thematic gaming experiences. Our main task is to create satisfaction and happiness for our fans in an economically viable way.

In order to continue on our path, the DDP team needs to find a few new additions to fill knowledge and skills gaps. Maybe you have some of these skills? If so, please consider joining our merry band.

As part of the DDP team you’ll get to influence all decisions on game design and be involved in as many areas as you desire. And, yes, there will be free products and other small perks available - and the team will cover agreed expenses.

We’re actively looking for people with the following skill sets:

• Video editing/animation. Kickstarter videos require more and more effort and occasionally we also need to edit some interviews and other demo materials. We are not tied to any editing infrastructure solutions, so you’d be free to choose what to use.
  
• US marketing/social media expert. We would like to increase our presence in the USA, which is too thin as our current team is mostly European. This could include some convention participation, running demoes of our games.
  
• Mechanical engineer. Our company is spinning-off a non-game related mechanical gadget to a start-up. We need a little bit of mechanical engineering, welding and possibly CNC skills for this project. If making a few relatively simple items from steel is something you can do, you could become a key person in this start-up. If the idea is a success, every person involved has an equal share of the profit.
  
• Web designer. We need to redesign our website visuals and make new content. Currently we have several websites which makes information hard to find and fragmented. We would appreciate help both in visuals and editing the text content.

If you think you can help fill any of these roles then contact us by email... or, if you know someone else who could, please let them know.

Production
over 5 years ago – Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 11:22:48 PM

How’s your summer been? Ours has been… stressful. You’ll know that we scheduled everything allowing for delays at various stages, for the revised edition. This was based on our experience of our previous Kickstarters, plus a bit extra, just in case. That flexibility allowed us to stay on track through spring, despite the mammoth task of producing the game in four different languages.

We arranged with our manufacturer to produce digital samples of various bits as they were ready and this seemed to be working OK but, sometime in May, it started to become difficult to get responses to our queries. We had a long, in-person, meeting with a representative from the company at UKGE, who sought to reassure us that our questions (based on what we had - and what we hadn’t - received from them) were being resolved. Then we heard nothing again. Eventually, we learned that our contact had left the company, which goes some way to explaining the communication issues. Their replacement shipped us the production sample as soon as they were appointed and we received it just 24 hours before the final deadline we’d set for signing everything off. So far, so good.

So, shipping in October remained the target. Earlier this week, we got the production samples. The printing quality is excellent, as you can see below. There are, however, one or two things we’re less happy with, that have changed from things we were shown previously, we'll talk more about this in another update, next week. We’re currently working with our manufacturer to find a solution. Unfortunately, it means that we may now miss our October target, pushing shipping into November.

We have two dual language boxes. ENG/SPA and GER/ITA. Each box contains components for only one of those languages and this is reflected in the barcode. However, due to an oversight on our part, only the second language clearly states in words, next to the barcode, what's in the box. If it doesn't say anything it's the primary language.

Missing October is very unfortunate. Not only are we very unhappy that we will not able to deliver the game to you in time, but Essen Spiel takes place in October. It’s important for us, as a company, to have product to sell at Essen. This is the biggest event of the year for direct sales as well as for brand exposure - having our flagship title available is, therefore, crucial for us. For this reason, we’re trying to ensure that we at least have some copies available there, which will likely mean flying them in. As we indicated above, we think the delay will only be a few weeks and so this might still be possible. We know this can sometimes be a source of controversy for a Kickstarter campaign and we agree that games should not normally be sold at retail or at conventions before all of the backers have received their copies. Under the circumstances though, we don’t feel like we have a choice but to do this on this occasion and we hope that you’ll understand and support us.You will, of course, still get your copy before any retailers.

We continue to learn a lot from our Kickstarter experiences and we’ll be less ambitious with regards to our translations in future but that did lead to a rewarding moment at BerlinCon. An elderly gentleman, a retired German teacher, sat down with our production copy, reading parts of the rulebook, some scenarios and the hero sheets. We felt like we were back at school. When eventually he’d read enough, he had nothing but good things to say about it!

Yes, we’re back on the road, again, and Tinsku is continuing to ‘blog about the Multamäki family’s travels. We’ll be at several more conventions in the build up to Essen and we’d love to show things off to you if you come along:

• Brussels Games Festival, 24th-26th August
• Jokos, Tarragona, 22nd-23rd September
• XIII Festival Internacional de Juegos Córdoba, on 11th-14th October
• Essen, 25th-28th October

If you follow us on social media (Twitter, Facebook) then you may have seen that we’ve borrowed an idea from some of our friends in the industry and we now have a publically visible production schedule so that you can see where we’re at and also know what we have in the pipeline. Something you may not know, is that Dwarf, which we’ll be crowdfunding on Kickstarter in February, will be the third game set in Zanziar (after Zanziar itself and Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift).

This is one of several titles that we hope to have playable demo’s of at Essen and we’d like to ask for your opinion as we prepare for the Kickstarter campaign - how much should we charge for the game? This isn’t a facetious question - how much we can charge affects how much we can spend, i.e. the component quality. We have a poll on BGG, now, that we’d really appreciate you taking the time to respond to.

Finally, we’ve heard several backers ask about the availability of Mogba’agh. We’ve always responded that we have no current plans to reprint this hero but we’re not deaf to your requests. So, we’ve created a second poll on BGG. If you answer this, you can let us know whether or not you’d be interested in backing a small Kickstarter campaign for reprinting Mogba’agh, maybe with some additional content like extra scenarios. Please note though that we anticipate this being a very small campaign - any extra content beyond simply reprinting Mogba’agh will be less than that for the Traitor Guard expansion, by way of comparison.

Thanks for your patience, hopefully the next update will bring better news.

Lee and the DDP team.

Cultists Were Defeated, What Next?
over 5 years ago – Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 12:24:25 AM

Cultists Were Defeated, What Next?

Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is being played for some time already, and more and more playing groups are reaching the final level. On Dragon Dawn Production side the production of the Revised Edition of the game is successfully moving forward towards its release so even more people will be able to mop-up pure evil from the world of Zanziar.

This means, that both we in DDP and the victorious demon beating parties have the same question: what next? As for us, there are many of the “next”. We are working on Singularity Sky - the evolution of our past game Phantom league transformed into a universe of a book of the same name (written by Charles Stross), card game Dwarf and Soul Spire - significant expansion of Perdition’s Mouth. And the last title is something, that might be really interesting for you if you finished or nearly finished the campaign.

Let me disclose a piece of internal communication about Soul Spire, that led me to write this update:

Timo: main Soul Spire document:
“...the assumption is that in the beginning you must have Simma+Guide+4 other Heroes to choose from. If those are not alive, you’ll need to resurrect the ones you like. But I think that in that case you should lose the “level up” cards that I did for those Heroes. Thi....”

Me in the comments:
“This requires heroes to be in the "big campaign" mode of PM:AR.

We should expect many groups starting with PM:SS. Even people, that finish AR will probably have their decks disbanded by the time SS is released. And those will definitely regret they have some interesting cards they can not use.”

Our internal discussion continues as we turn every idea upside down before we use it, but this is not that important. What I would like to say to you: after you finish the last scenario in your campaign, do save your game the same way how you did that between the missions and in addition to that, record your decks and items of both fallen and living heroes, so you can decommission your deck for another run through or single scenarios, but are still ready for the next installment!

The way how the transition to the new installment will be done is not clear at the moment (I most like the one, where in an additional prequel scenario surviving heroes return to AR with a rod of resurrection to collect remains of their fallen comrades and bring them to life). There is a long way from good ideas to a good game. But if you win (or won) the campaign, be advised, that there will be a way how to resurrect and heal your heroes. As always in PM, not for free, but even if you lose most of your party while killing the demon, it will be better for you to “continue” the campaign in Soul Spire than just start a new one.

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