#socialdeception

Walter found himself down in the Sinking Salute for what must have been the third night this week. It wasn't a place that offered much, though it didn't expect much either. He cradled the drink in his palm which offered a warmth of numbness he could rely on

Intimidating Introductions page 2 panel 2

Many of you are curious about Blood On The Clocktower, and have decided to either make your own Grimoires, or to play online via one of the many fan-made digital platforms. I'm hoping that the following excerpts from the rulebook will be helpful in getting you started. Whilst they are certainly not the complete rules, they should be enough to answer the most basic questions that arise about how to Storytell a game of Trouble Brewing, and maybe even beyond.

The unfortunate delay of the game has resulted in a lot of people learning to play Blood On The Clocktower either from hearsay or trial and error. This should make things a little easier: BOTC Basic Rules

These PDFs can act sort of like a "quick start" set of rules to get you familiar enough with the basics, should you be interested in running a game or just want to get familiar with things before your physical copy arrives.

Also, I've found it to be incredibly helpful to new players to hear the following rules explanation before their first time playing. As a Storyteller, I read this out (or ad-lib it) before every game I run, and it is a great introduction for the players: BOTC Rules Explanation for New Players

It covers the main points that new players need to learn before beginning, ignores the more finnicky elements that nobody needs to know yet, and gets the group playing with a minimum of fuss. Reading this aloud before a game usually answers a lot of player questions that would otherwise occur during the game. It also acts a short "What am I supposed to be doing?" guide.

If you use this sheet, I recommend waiting until the first nomination is about to occur to read out the part that deals with nominations and voting. The players don't need to know this information until this point, and will retain much more information when the rules are read out when they need to use them.

Good luck, and have fun.

Hey Everyone, it’s Evin here this time with this month’s update. As you’ve likely surmised from the title, we are experiencing another:

Delay of Game

Based on the most recent advice we got from the manufacturer, Panda GM, they expect the game to be fully completed and ready to go onto boats at their factory in China around mid-February 2022. This timeline comes with a few massive caveats, which I’ll go into more detail about below.

The clear bad news is that this is another extensive delay. The good news is that this delay is unlike the previous delays we’ve experienced. The game is in print at the factory and the wheels are churning to simply get it printed and assembled. To put that more bluntly: The things holding the game up are no longer the trials & tribulations of us first-timers, it’s in the hands of more seasoned professionals now. Where previous delays were primarily related to the ability of ourselves and our contractors to complete the game’s visuals in a timely manner (and, importantly, in a satisfactory manner), and the need to resolve the ~300 ambiguous rules issues that were very helpfully raised by fans of the game, during & after the campaign, this new delay is largely due to all of the Covid-related global supply chain issues that are currently affecting just about everything in just about every industry and country.

Since the completion of the pre-production copy, we’ve had to have a fair few more back-and-forths of file adjustments with Panda as certain tics to be corrected or minor sizing improvements to be made were discovered, before going into print proper. We wanted to wait until these bugs were resolved and until Panda had a handle on how all of the Covid-related global supply chain issues were affecting them, and our project in particular, before we came out with an updated timeline. The expected completion in mid-February is disheartening, but it seems to appropriately accommodate the current situation in China. Planned power outages are currently common around China, and whilst Panda has advised us that they do receive a day’s notice before such outages are due to occur for their own factories, so they're not completely disruptive, the reality of them must be factored into their projected production timelines.

Re-Reassess Your Address

In September we asked everyone who backed or ordered the game to make sure their address was locked in by the end of October. Obviously with this latest blowout in delivery timeline, addresses needn’t be locked in quite so soon. We’ll give a new deadline in future, but generally we’ll want addresses to be locked in around the time the game is going onto boats, so expect that to be around mid-February if this new timeline holds.

To update or confirm your delivery address, if you’ve backed or pre-ordered the game, simply login at the CrowdOx portal here using the email address you used to back the campaign with: https://portal.crowdox.com/

If you’re having any issues accessing the portal, or if your change in address requires a change of country, please email us at [email protected].

Potentially Good News on Sea Freight

The silver lining with this delay in manufacturing is that it means we stand a chance at avoiding delays related to sea freight. As you may have already heard, there is currently a global shortage of shipping containers and backlogs at ports around the world that is leading to extensive delays and spiraling costs when it comes to international sea freight. However, mid-February, after Chinese New Year, is typically the low season for sea freight, so it’s possible that some of these issues will have resolved themselves by then. Of course, it’s just as possible that the current issues are so immense that the shortage of containers and backlog of shipments persists until then, leading to further delays. Right now it’s impossible to know for sure.

One way that the freight crisis, in particular, has affected us is that it caused us to lower our initial print run of the game from 14,000 copies (combined total between Kickstarter versions and standard pre-orders) to 13,000 copies. If things are going to cost more to freight in 4-5 months than they will in 12-18 months, it makes sense to have a few less things to freight now and more things to freight later. Lowering the print order just a little bit is a precaution we’ve taken, but one that still leaves us enough spare copies to continue to accept ongoing pre-orders, and further orders once the game delivers. It also has the added benefit that the actual printing of the game will take a little less time. It means we may be returning for a second print-run sooner than we anticipated, but there are worse problems to have.

If sea freight is to revert to something resembling ‘normal’ by mid-February 2022, we’d then expect freight to fulfilment centres to take 4-6 weeks, and shipping from those centres to take 2-4 weeks. This would mean we’re looking at Blood on the Clocktower arriving in April 2022 - exactly three years from the Kickstarter campaign. Amazingly, while talking to our project manager at Panda, they mentioned that BOTC is still not the game they’ve worked on that’s taken the longest from funding to completion, and we’re still on track to have our game out well before we reach that ignominious milestone. Trumpeting that we’re ‘literally not the worst case scenario’ isn’t much of a brag, but at this point in the project, with the way things are in the world and the supply chain in the state it’s in, I’ll take whatever we can get. Personally, I’m just thankful that we’re finally in print, and that we’ve got the funds & support we need to see this through to completion. I’m especially thankful, as I’m sure many of you also are, that there’s no more tomfoolery with the art and the rules - it’s just the cold hard process of manufacture, assembly, and delivery, set against the challenging and often frustrating backdrop of a Covid-affected world.

A Word on the Price of Blood on the Clocktower

While we’re primed to talk about global supply chains and the interconnectedness of everything, this is a good time to talk about the price of the game. First and foremost: In light of the current supply chain crisis, and spiraling sea freight costs in particular, we want to reassure everyone that we’re still all good for funding everything and all good to go.

All the same: For the first time since the ‘late pledge’ period ended in 2019, we’re planning to raise the price for the pre-order of the standard game of Blood on the Clocktower, around the end of this month.

The Kickstarter copies cost $79 USD at the time of the campaign and for two months after the campaign, and the standard pre-order for the game since then has been $95 USD. Using one of the main accepted standard industry methods for calculating MSRP, based on the manufacturing cost & the freight cost, the price for Blood on the Clocktower, at the time of the Kickstarter in 2019, “should” have been set around $99 USD for the standard version, i.e. before any stretch goals are factored in. When you factor in the cost of the stretch goals, the MSRP for a Kickstarter version of the game would have come in at around $110 or $115 USD in 2019, if it was simply a product that we were producing from scratch to send straight into distribution. So the game is very late, but all of you who backed it at $79 are getting incredible value.

We chose to offer discounts on the KS version and the pre-order version for a number of reasons. To echo many of the things I said during the campaign itself two-and-a-half years ago, Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game on a far larger size & scale than anything else out there. For a genre where people were far more used to paying no more than $30 USD for a box about an eighth of the size, we didn’t want to freak people out while we were still an unknown quantity. We also wanted to generously reward people who opted to take a chance on something so new in the genre. Fortunately, because the margins on Kickstarter are relatively high when compared to the margins for putting a game into distribution, we were able to afford this discount. When it came time to shift from ‘late pledges’ to pre-orders, we accepted that selling ongoing pre-orders at this same rate of $79 USD would have been unsustainable. However, we were still a long way from delivering and didn’t want to charge the full MSRP (as it was at the time) before people had a chance to try it out en masse, so we set the price at $95 USD as kind of an ongoing, built-in, pre-order discount.

Now that we’re on the other end of pre-production and roughly 18 months into Covid, the same calculations applied to today’s figures lead to a much higher MSRP, due to increased manufacturing costs and exponentially higher freighting costs.

Manufacturing is projecting to cost more per copy than we first anticipated. Panda’s original quotes to us ended up being mostly pretty accurate, however there’s still been an increase in the per-copy cost largely on account of the custom-made corner protectors and special packaging that each copy will be packed with from the time it leaves the factory, so that the Grimoire arrives in great shape. Unlike most other games, the box for BOTC is an integral part of gameplay and not just a storage device, so it’s a priority that it arrives in the best possible condition.

  Freight costs continue to rise and are giving no indication that they’ll revert to pre-Covid levels any time soon. In May this year, the projected cost of freight per-copy was almost double what it was when we launched in 2019. Current sea freight prices are now triple what they were at the launch time in 2019. This drastic rise in freight cost is the biggest driver in the increase in MSRP.

All of this means that the same MSRP calculations made at today’s prices land the game’s MSRP at $135 USD. (If you want to do the same MSRP calculation for the Kickstarter version of the game, it comes in just shy of $150 USD - again, incredible value for getting it at $79.) This means that anyone who’s pre-ordered at $95 USD has experienced something like a $40 discount.

As Covid has progressed since early 2020, and as the supply chain issues have mounted throughout 2021, we’ve witnessed many other creators raise the price of their games accordingly. For us, we were aware that we were still in pre-production, far from delivery, and that pre-order customers would still have a bit of a wait for their copy of Blood on the Clocktower, so we tried to hold off for as long as possible. Given that we still had the funds to make good on all of our commitments, it was possible to do so. However given that the freight crisis appears to have no end in sight, it’s incumbent upon us to think not just of our commitments to the backers & customers who’ve already ordered the game, but to also think about the future and our ability to make more games beyond this first print run. As such, we’ll soon be raising the pre-order price of Blood on the Clocktower in order to accommodate much of these increases in manufacturing and freighting costs. We’ll still offer a built-in pre-order discount, below the full MSRP of $135. Once the game is out proper, we’ll look at the viability of adjusting the price to reflect the full industry standard of what the MSRP should be.

Happy Halloween

It’s felt good to share some of the process & reasoning behind what’s happened in the past and what’s happening next, even if the news is largely poor. I’m looking especially forward to future posting with lots of photos of games on pallets and atmospheric shots of container ships navigating the high seas.

Steven and I have mostly been keeping our heads down while we’re working on a lot of the back-end stuff to do with running The Pandemonium Institute or getting all the support materials ready for the game’s release, as well as dealing with the usual curve balls that life throws at us from time to time. But we’re constantly heartened by seeing the fantastic community that continues to grow around this game. Really. Honestly, we can’t wait to get the game out and get out there again ourselves to join in all the fun.

Cheers, and Happy Halloween,

Now that you’ve had a few days to point your eyes at our initial photographs, in the last post, it’s time to go into more detail about the pre-production copy. I’ll be separating this post into three sections. First I’ll go over what they’ve absolutely nailed, which will make up the bulk of the post. Then I’ll discuss what we had issues with and how those issues have been addressed. Finally, we’ll talk about what wasn’t included and why it wasn’t included. But before I do, please keep in mind that the purpose of a pre-production copy is to iron out any remaining creases. It’s a dress rehearsal, so don’t panic if the actors get a few lines slightly wrong.

The Good

The Rulebooks are fantastic. We spent so much time getting these right, but there’s always that fear that the text might come out weird and unreadable, or the artwork might look all washed out and crappy on paper. But the rulebooks have absolutely outstripped our expectations and we’re just thrilled to bits with how awesome they look.

The Grimoire is extremely sturdy and well-built. We’ve slapped it around a fair bit and it’s clearly built to withstand a lot of punishment. This is good, because you will end up lobbing it around a lot.

The Character Sheets are just wonderful. Not only do they seem to be even more durable than the previous white sample examples sent through, but they’re also vibrant and very easy to read.

The Felt is fantastic. It’s arguably the weirdest part of the whole box, and certainly not something that your average board game producing factory is used to manufacturing. We honestly had nightmares worrying about how this particular component might need loads of extra scrutiny. But credit where it’s due, Panda Manufacturing have absolutely nailed it on their first try.

The Pages on the outside of the grimoire look so cool. This might seem like a little thing, but we made sure to get the lines on the edge of the grimoire to line up properly, creating the illusion of an actual, giant tome of eldritch lore! It’s those little touches that really add to the atmosphere of a game and, frankly, which make the difference between a good game and a great game. It’s mega satisfying to see it look so real.

The Token Boxes fit together really well. They’re the perfect size to contain all of the necessary bits, but most importantly, they’re very sturdy. In a lot of our prototype copies of the game, the token boxes needed to be held closed with rubber bands, so we’ve ensured that the cardboard around the edge of these versions is nice & thick and keeps them closed naturally, as you can see from the pictures below.

The Bad

The Sleeve around the Grimoire is a little askew. It fits perfectly, but the folds in the PPC were in the wrong spot. It looks a little jarring if you know what it’s supposed to look like.

The Double-Sided Tokens, in some instances, have some pretty heavy drift on one of their sides.

Both of the above issues have been confirmed by Panda as not being representative of the finished product. In their exact words, “this is normal in a PPC since the tokens are cut by a plodder and not die cut. In mass production, drift is a maximum of 1 mm in the worst situations. Don't worry this is typical for a PPC.”

The Absent

The Death Shrouds, Token Bags, and Plastic Sleeves were not in this most recent sample provided. This is because the PPC contains only printed products. We’ve already seen samples of all of these and approved them in advance. You can check the death shrouds out in this update from almost a year ago and the bags can be seen in this one, from May of 2020.

In Other News

If you’ve made a pre-order for Blood on the Clocktower and need to change your postal address, this can be done easily via the CrowdOx portal. If you do need to do this we’d appreciate you having it done as soon as possible, to ensure that your game is delivered to the correct address. We’ll have a final deadline for address changes for you in future. If you’re having any issues, or if you need to change your address to a different country, don’t hesitate to drop us an email at: [email protected]

We’ve received some questions regarding whether we’re still on schedule for our November 30th release date. Our initial estimates, regarding how long each step in the manufacturing would take, were quite conservative, providing for a bunch of potential issues at each step. Essentially, all of the times have a lot of 'padding' on them. At the moment, we’re still on track for the planned date, but if that changes at all it'll likely be to do with the current freighting crisis. We have the funds to absorb extra costs that we might incur, but we’ve got no control over shipping times, unfortunately. Having said that, our freight partner hasn’t yet suggested that we’ll be affected, but if they do then we’ll update the timeline and delivery expectations accordingly.

I’d also like to drop you all a link to the experimental characters section of the wiki, which has come a long way since our last mention of it. You’ll notice that almost all of the experimental characters are now included on it. The wiki really is a fantastic resource for getting to grips with individual characters and finding fun ways to play them, so please do go check it out.

Finally, I just want to point out that this will likely be our final major news on physical production. We’ll continue to check in with you guys every month, and you can expect more useful information to come along between now and release. But really, these final adjustments mark the end of our work on the game itself and the beginning of it transitioning into something that exists on your shelves and at your local board game stores. Thanks again for taking this journey with us, and I personally can’t wait to play this game with as many of you as I can convince to tolerate me!

Hullooo!

The long-awaited pre-production copy is here and there’s a lot to be pleased with. We’re going to share just a couple of photos with you that we took as we were opening the box. In future we’ll do another, larger update, with some more professionally-taken pictures that will be much higher quality. But for now we just really wanted you guys to see this as quickly as humanly possible.

First of all, here’s a little snap of the box on some weighing scales. At 4,188 grams (about 148 ounces), it’s actually a little lighter than we’d expected, which is fantastic.

From the front, you can see that the sleeve fits snugly over the whole thing. The purples and browns mix together really nicely to create the sense of an ancient, regal tome, perhaps found in the depths of a cursed library.

The tokens look great on their punch boards. In particular, the actual role tokens came out looking really vibrant and easy to read.

Similarly, the rulebooks are just wonderful. The art looks absolutely gorgeous on paper and the colours really pop out of the pages at you.

The character sheets have never looked better. We were very impressed with how crisp and vibrant they are. They’re extremely easy to read, as well as navigate with your eyes, which is going to be crucial when you need to come up with a quick lie in a pinch.

Finally, here’s a snap of the back of the box, looking very ominous.

I’m absolutely itching to just throw another 30 pictures in here and show you all of the things. But I know the sensible thing to do is to wait until Andy has had a chance to properly photograph them and present them clearly to you all.

See you next time,

In our July 2021 update there’s not a great deal to report. We cover:

Our ongoing improvements to the BOTC Wiki,

that the pre-production copy has not yet arrived but we’re expecting it soon,

the rising cost of sea-freighting (and that we can cover those costs),

and that Ben Burns will be at UKGE at the end of this month.

Read it all here!

Cheers,