Preorders Now Available
about 8 years ago – Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 03:35:21 PM

Hello again.

I've now opened up No Honor Among Thieves to preorders, at this fashionable web store set up for me by BackerKit. There are somewhat fewer options for preorders at slightly higher costs than there are for Kickstarter backers, but it's still a way to get the game. Preorder customers can even get the Kickstarter promo cards included, albeit by paying extra for them. So if you have friends who weren't able to back the campaign but still want to get the game, here's where you can point them.

Future Plans:

At some point, probably early 2017, I'm going to close preorders, submit the final manufacturing order to Panda Games, and get everything to backers and preorder customers. After that, my plan is to open an ecommerce shop on my own website where people can buy the retail version of the game directly. If I work things right people should be able to get their hands on No Honor Among Thieves for as long as I have extra copies in the warehouses. The minimum print run from Panda is 1500 copies, and I need about 900 for the Kickstarter backers, which means at minimum I'm going to have 600 extra copies I can sell.

Not a bad way of doing business, this.

Cheers,

Adam

One Month Update
about 8 years ago – Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 12:42:15 AM

Hello, friend.

To help keep you informed of the progress towards putting No Honor Among Thieves in your hands, I’ve decided to do an update once a month going over whatever I’ve managed to get done in that time, and maybe getting your feedback on the process. In this update I have progress on getting stuff to you, a survey, some preliminary art, and a convention announcement.

The Important Part

You may be wondering when you are going to be getting your Guilder tokens and hats. The answer is, very soon. I've gotten BackerKit responses from most of the people who backed the campaign now, so I know how many little envelopes I need to acquire to start getting the tokens out the door, which is basically all I've been waiting for to get moving on that. BackerKit is telling me that I need to ship out 310 Guilder coins, which I foolishly declared that I would do personally as soon as possible after the campaign instead of using a fulfillment service like I am for the game itself, so please bear with me as I work my through all of those.

84 people haven't responded to the BackerKit survey yet. Two of them have told me what they want personally, having decided to not deal with BackerKit, which is fine, but for the rest of those 82 people I can't send out their rewards unless I have a place to send them to. Hopefully I get some shipping information before I need to actually ship things.

Boxes: The Survey

In the comments section recently, backer Night1505 mentioned that they really liked the game box in the main Kickstarter image, and then proceeded to describe something entirely different from what the box actually looks like. It turns out that the lighting when I took that photo makes it look like it has a dark brown cover and golden sides, when in fact the prototype box I have is a glossy black on all sides.

The description that Night so lovingly poured over sounded like it might look really cool, though, so I threw together an altered box file and had a second prototype created.

I've put together a very brief survey that you can use to give me your opinion on the subject. Fill it out here.

Art: Sketches

I've been doing the art from the Mastermind, Nobility, Prisoner, and Nouveau Riche pledge levels before I get to the rest of the game's art. I don't have any final pieces yet, but I figured I'd share with you some of the sketches that my artists have been getting to me. These aren't finished, but I think they still look great, and they give you a good idea of the direction the art is moving in.

I'm also having artists work on the promo cards, since I decided I'm going to keep those out of the pool of options for the art backers.

 Hopefully by the next update I'll have some final art that I can show off.

Convention: Carnage

I'm going to be at the Carnage convention in Killington, Vermont next weekend, running games of No Honor Among Thieves from 1-5 PM on Saturday, November 5th, in the Oscar Wilde room. Check out the event page here if you're interested. I believe preregistration for events is now closed, but I'm pretty sure you can still stop by if you're in the area.

I'm going to have copies of all the new promo cards in the box at Carnage, so I can give them a bit more testing. I'm also going to try out an alternate method for resolving situations where multiple players betray each other on a heist, which was suggested to me by a backer who also happens to be part of my weekly game design club. If it ends up working out, I may be able to simplify that part of the rulebook a bit more, which I'm excited about.

Final Notes

I’d like to conclude this update by saying that this isn’t actually everything I’d hoped and planned to have done by this time. October has been a bit of a crazy month for me. If you were hanging out in the comments section near the end of the Kickstarter run, you may remember me mentioning some personal issues that cropped up suddenly that were distracting me from the campaign during the second-to-last day: that was me learning that I was going to be laid off at the end of October. For the past month I’ve been splitting my time between still working at my day job, trying to find a new job to replace it, and working to deliver all the stuff I promised during the campaign. In addition to that, I’ve been sick for about half the month, which has made everything just a little bit harder than it should have been.

Friday was my last day at work, and though I have a few good leads I don’t have another full-time job lined up quite yet. Which is, you know, not ideal, but also gives me more time in the day to devote to No Honor Among Thieves as we move into November. I’ve got some freelance web work ready to go that should carry me for a bit as I continue my job search, so there’s no need to worry about me personally. I just wanted to explain why things may have been a little slower and a little more chaotic than expected this past month.

And that’s all I’ll say about that. You’re here for the game, not my personal life. I'll keep it to that in future updates.

It’s been a wild ride, in more ways than one. Thanks for coming along for it.

Cheers,

Adam

Surveys in the Wind
about 8 years ago – Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 01:09:03 AM

I'd been telling people--in person, in the comments, and on Twitter--that the surveys would probably go out on Monday, because I still needed final clearance from the BackerKit people, and I suspected they didn't work weekends. To my surprise, apparently at least one of them does (thanks, Justin!), so I'm now able to get those surveys out to you a little earlier than I'd been expecting.

You should be receiving an email with a link to your personalized survey very shortly. Some notes on them before you go in and start clicking around:

• I couldn't make the pledge manager software treat additional Guilders and Action Coins as costing less by default, so you're going to see two different items for each of those. One item represents the first one you buy, the other represents any others after the first. The pledge manager itself won't stop you from just going straight to the $3 ones instead of the $4, so we're going to have to police that ourselves. Basically, please don't make me send you a message later on to let you know that you need to pay another dollar. I don't want to be that guy.
• If your card was declined when Kickstarter tried charging it, and you couldn't get it sorted out in time, you'll be brought into the pledge manager as a $0 level backer, and can pay through BackerKit for your copy of the game and whatever add-ons you wanted.
• As promised, hats have been added to the pledge manager. I originally only had one version of the NoHAT Hat, a high-profile structured cap with a flexfit brim, but I got a request from a backer for an unstructured low-profile one as well, and since my manufacturer can do both I figured why not. As a note, judging by the sample I ordered the unstructured hats do seem to be a little smaller than the flexfit ones, so if you have a bigger skull (like me) you might want to go for the other hat. Also, note that the hats are shipping from a facility in the US instead of from multiple fulfillment centers like the games themselves are, so international shipping is going to be a lot worse (included in the base price for the USA, $2 for Canada, $15 for everywhere else). Sorry about that.
• You can log back into the pledge manager and make changes to your pledge for a while after the surveys go out, adding and removing things to your order--with one exception. I'm going to be sending out the hats and Guilders earlier than everything else, and once I've done so you won't be able to cancel that part of your pledge. I don't expect that this will be a problem, but I figured I ought to mention it just in case.

I think that covers everything that isn't explicitly detailed in the pledge manager interface. If you have any questions, you can either contact BackerKit's support staff or contact me directly, at which point I will probably ask BackerKit's support staff.

Cheers,

Adam

Out With A Bang
about 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 10:54:00 PM

The campaign has now ended, successfully funded for 165% of what I asked for, and I'm absolutely speechless.

Thanks to everyone who backed the project, seriously. You guys are awesome.

In the coming weeks I'm going to be sorting things out on my end and getting you an email with a link to the pledge manager I've decided to use (because doing the bookkeeping for add-ons by hand was driving me insane). In the pledge manager you'll be able to sort out what add-ons and pledge levels you chose, and also add more if you want, including some stuff that wasn't made available during the campaign due to issues with their manufacturing and shipping costs. The hats that I've promised throughout the campaign will be available in the pledge manager, for example.

Also, in quite literally the final minutes of the campaign, we managed to bypass another stretch goal.

The Outsider Pack contains three new Schemes, and three new Defenses.

The Schemes:

• Gallows Day (Logistics): Kill a Character in Jail (2 copies).
• Underdog (Moment of Truth): If you are getting less Coins from this heist than any other player involved, gain additional Coins from the bank.
• Agitator (Moment of Truth): If you are betrayed, gain a large amount of additional Coins from the bank.

The Defenses:

• Hooded Figures: Who are they? What do they want? Nobody knows, but everyone does know that they seem to be meeting on that baron's estate just outside of town...
• Society Gala: There's a party going on tonight. That means there's going to be lots of people around who might spot your crew, but also a lot of people to hide yourself among, if you think your thieves can spruce themselves up a bit and pass as guests.
• Inquisitor: He already knows the answers to the questions he asks.

Just like every other promo pack added to the game, you'll get this in the copy or copies you pledged for on Kickstarter.

Thanks again for everything. It's been a crazy ride.

I mentioned earlier that I was speechless: I'm also exhausted. Time to get some rest, finally.

Cheers,

Adam

It's about to be legendary.

Throw Away the Key: Box Upgrade Unlocked
about 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 08:12:43 PM

Hello again, friend. Yet another stretch goal unlock for you.

This stretch goal brings us sturdier materials with a better finish, as well as a nice box insert. Straightforward and practical stuff, but important to take into consideration when storing something as exquisitely valuable as No Honor Among Thieves.

There's two hours and twenty minutes left in the campaign. The next stretch goal, $2000 away, is the Outsider Pack, a collection of new cards, ranging from the sinister Hooded Figures defense to the sly Underdog scheme. Will we make it before the end of the campaign?

Let's find out.

Cheers,

Adam