February Update
about 3 years ago – Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 06:20:57 PM

Hello friends,

Lots of things have been happening behind the scenes on Flames of Freedom since our last update. Here are the latest developments:

First of all, we have welcomed a new artist Kyle Latino to our team, who is joining the rest of us in making the Flames of Freedom world come to life on the page. Kyle works in pencil, which complements Dejan Mandic's hand-drawn style found throughout the book. He recently wrapped up 12 maps for our included adventure Boston Besieged. Here's a video of his process:

It is literally a bigger and better book now – our page count has increased (looks like we're going to land just a little bit north of 650 pages), and we are beyond pleased with every single one. Take a look at some of our new samples from Article 3: Professions and Article 14: Threats:

All this additional work does mean we are having to slightly extend the book’s production schedule. Your copies and other items will now be shipped approximately four weeks later – i.e. in mid-August, with a new retail date of late September. We truly apologize for this delay but hope you will find the wait to be well worth it. Once we have books in hand, shipping and handling your orders will be our top priority. 

As always, please send us your comments and questions! We love to hear from you.

Best,

-d.fx

PS Be sure to join our Disord for live discussions about FLAMES OF FREEDOM: https://discord.gg/Zwiehander

PPS You can see higher fidelity images of the spreads over on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZweihanderRPG/status/1365400308625649669?s=20

January Update
over 3 years ago – Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 09:44:05 PM

Hello friends,

We are a few weeks into 2021, and things are progressing nicely for Flames of Freedom! We are so excited to get your books and items out to you later this year. Here are the most recent updates from our end:

PARCELS FOR ZWEIHANDER

We loaded up the Zweihander, Main Gauche and Player's Handbooks, and carted them to our distribution center in early December!

• All backers who ordered them should have access to Zweihander, Main Gauche and the Player's Handbook PDFs.
• US and UK backers who ordered them should have their copies of Zweihander, Main Gauche and the Player's Handbooks.

If you're missing any parcels or PDFs, be sure to drop us a direct message here on Kickstarter.

FLAMES OF FREEDOM PRODUCTION

We wrapped up the manuscript in mid-December, which put us a few weeks ahead of schedule! The hard work from back-of-house staff (production editors, routings, proofing and copy editing) begun in early January. Most recently, we completed our internal routings for Article 5: Wares & Weapons. We've uploaded an art-free PDF of this chapter into DriveThruRPG (entitled Sample Article 5 Wares & weapons (art free).pdf), which you can download as a part of the free Quickstart at this link.

NEW ARTWORK

Much like Zweihander RPG before it, Flames of Freedom will be chockablock full of Dejan Mandic's evocative artwork. Midway through production, we introduced a new art director: Mitch Wallace. As a part of this, we also set up an internal counsel to give inclusivity notes and vet all art briefs to ensure we're delivering on our brand promise of diversity in artwork. Here's a sampling of ones that recently came in:

FLAMES OF FREEDOM CHARACTER SHEETS

Amber Seger recently completed our Flames of Freedom character sheets, which I've shared out a short video on Twitter previewing it. We leaned heavily into UX, ensuring that players who write large and messy (as I tend to do) have enough white space/affordance to do so. Here's a look at a completely randomized character I created:

WHAT'S NEXT

All our other goodies are on track for production, too! Here's a bulletlist of progress:

• Flames of Freedom Core Rulebook PDF is on track for early release to backers in late March.
• We've got final designs over to Campaign Coins, and should have samples in the next couple of months to show off.
• We're waiting on canvas samples of our maps from Geekify. 
• We're finalizing the design for the custom dice this week.
• Historian's Screen will undergo layout in March, once we have the final PDF for you all.

Until next time, happy gaming!

-d.fx

The next 24 hours: surveys lock, cards will be charged
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 10:35:41 PM

Dear friends,

Thanks to all your support, we're locking in details with our fulfillment partners this week. And with that, we are asking you to get your surveys updated in the next 24 hours on Backerkit.

If you ordered the Zweihander Book Collection or any of these books piecemeal, you will be receiving tracking numbers by next week for your shipments. We will also be releasing PDFs as cards are successfully charged next Monday.

Have any pressing questions? Need me to manually send you a survey link? Drop into the Discord and DM me: HTTP://discord.zweihander.game

Cheers,

-d.fx

Orders locking in 48 hours for shipping Zweihander books before the holiday!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 02:36:30 PM

Hello friends,

Hope all of you had a safe and happy holiday, for those who celebrated.

We're down to the final 48 hours before all orders lock. This means that now's the time to get your surveys completed, update anything you wish to add to your order and more. This week, we will be sending the Zweihander and Main Gauche books to the distributors to begin packing and shipping. You'll get a tracking ID via Backerkit soon. PDFs will also be released once tracking IDs are sent out.

If you haven't done so already, head to backerkit.zweihander.game to complete your survey.

If you have any questions, head to the #flames-of-freedom chat channel in Discord and @ DanielDFox, so we can respond direct: discord.zweihander.game

In related news, FLAMES OF FREEDOM manuscript is almost complete! The Historian's Secrets chapter is undergoing its final round of proofing and the Hexenmeister's Almanack will be completed in 12 days, which means we are on track to deliver the manuscript to layout a week ahead of schedule. This puts us on track for a PDF release of mid to late March 2021– just as promised.

Finally, did you see our latest announcement? Coming in 2021 is BLACKBIRDS, a new dark horror fantasy Powered by #ZweihanderRPG.   Created by Ryan Verniere and developed & illustrated by an incredible cast of creators, it will dive deep into a whole new realm of horror. We will be releasing more information as time comes about this new, exciting dark fantasy RPG. However, you can follow along at the website BlackBirdsRPG.com or on Twitter.

As always, thank you for all your support. We've got more exciting things coming your way soon, so stay tuned.

Be well,

-d.fx

13 days until surveys are locked! See within
over 3 years ago – Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 09:27:56 PM

Hello friends,

Thanks so much for acting so quickly on your surveys! As of this moment, over 72% of you have completed your Backerkit order, and 32% of you have included new Add-Ons! 

SURVEY COMPLETION DUE BY NOV 30TH

For those of you who have yet to finish your survey, you'll have another 13 days to complete it.

Here's our timeline:

• Lock in orders: November 30th, 2020
• Charge card: December 1st, 2020
• Release Zweihander-related PDFs: December 1st 2020
• Ship physical books for Zweihander Collection, Zweihander-Core Rulebook, Main Gauche & Zweihander-Player Handbook: begins December 2nd 

Once we ship the above physical books, you'll get an email with your tracking IDs.

INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING QUESTIONS

Finally, we're working through a handful of questions about international shipping via Backerkit. We will respond back to each of you individually within the next 24-48 hours.

Talk soon!

-d.fx