Winter Is Here, Along With Exciting Work
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 08:30:46 PM

Hello Everyone!

The American holiday season is in full swing. Redsky’s team is looking back on our month of progress with pride.

Writing, Rules, and Art

First, we’ve closed the gap on the doubled lore and game mechanics writing to within less than 15,000 words until completion. This was a stretch goal we were happy to rise to the challenge for. Tyler has compared this milestone to being in the second half of an American Thanksgiving football game with our team in a massive lead. (Tyler says he phrases it this way to his 'regular' friends because: “It's easier than describing how I’ve now written two books about bird, mushroom, and shark people building castles inside a giant spaceship.”)

The rules and mechanics changes from Playtest 1 have been incorporated into the master sheets. To accompany the text, we’ve been diving even deeper into the location development with our collaborative artists. Dozens of hours have been spent researching architectural and environmental influences from world cultures. The final revised list of spot art objects has also been developed. Here is just one very rough concept art sketch for the Thalkast environment from the beginning of November. This mysterious underground region is teeming with cave horrors and ancient secrets of the world ship’s hull.

The devs have since seen what our collaborator Ramazan Kazaliev has imagined based off this early work. The community is in for a treat. We’re onboarding more artists to round out the roster of talent. Expect to see a vastly expanded number of characters and scenes in our social media in 2022. Each image will, of course, be featured in the finished conversion book, which is still firmly on track to be released Summer 2022.

Our Convention Debut

Solar Studios is also beyond excited to announce that Alex, Ken, and I are attending PAX Unplugged this December in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! As one of the biggest tabletop and board game expos in the world, going to PAX feels like its own milestone. Unfortunately, we will not be setting up a table this year due to our lack of resources and status as freshmen tabletop creators. However, we will make sure that we are identifiable, and we can't wait to talk about all things Redsky with whomever finds us!

Though we won't have a booth for Redsky, we will not be entirely empty-handed. The team has surprise sneak peeks of our plans for Dema that we can’t wait to show off. Alex will be penning an update in approximately 2 weeks to reveal further details, so stay tuned.

If you plan on stopping by PAX, we would love to meet you and celebrate this new creative universe we all share. Drop us an email or a message on our social media if you want to coordinate!

VTTs and Playtest 2

The back half of December tends to be a productivity dead-end due to the holidays, at least in America. That is one reason - among others that I will explain shortly - that we have decided it will be better to launch Playtest 2 in January/February of 2022. Previously we have said that it would take place by the end of the year, but December is a very busy time and is best spent with friends and family - not working on or playtesting indie tabletop games, at least in our opinion.

One of the other reasons is to maximize our Virtual Tabletop integration, so that people have a chance to play online with their friends using official tools and modules. I've been hard at work on Stage One of our VTT integration plan, which includes Shard Tabletop, Foundry VTT, and the Avrae Discord bot. The additional time will ensure that I'll be able to get maps and modules working in addition to the underlying system. I may even be able to make headway on integrating with Roll20, although I cannot promise that.

For those interested in running the game for their friends using a VTT, we'll announce a firm 2022 launch date for Playtest 2 before the winter holidays.

Some technical details about Avrae: With the permission of the original developer and the advice of some of our more technical supporters, I have decided to "fork" Avrae into an original Discord bot that will be customized to Redsky. This allows us to fix some thorny issues such as character sheet support and changes to 5e's skill system. Avrae can do a lot with it's aliases to mitigate the differences, but solving those problems will always require additional setup for the Players. However, some people may prefer using the original Avrae and aliases for their Redsky games instead of installing an additional bot. If you have strong opinions about this, please reach out and let me know. If you have no idea what any of that meant, don't worry about it!

Whew, that was a lot! We wish every one of our American backers a happy Thanksgiving, and our friends around the world a fun and safe November.

Brandon Gurwitz

CEO, Solar Studios

The Kind of Progress You Love To See
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 11:16:18 PM

Hello Everyone!

The Devs have some exciting progress to share in multiple areas.

The exclusive Playtest #1 of the conversion book has now been completed. We received invaluable feedback from dozens of GMs and players on how to tweak gameplay mechanics. The system is much stronger thanks to the passion of our community. The revised rules set is being incorporated into Playtest #2, which will be opened to all who want to participate! We hope you’ll feel free to play with your existing friend groups, make new ones on the Redsky Discord, or stream your party’s antics on Twitch or Youtube. Expect to hear more about the timetable for Playtest #2 over the coming months.

Tens of thousands of words of new lore have been drafted and edited into polished material. The sub-factions, locations, and histories of Dema and its peoples are bursting at the seams. Included in these lore entries are writeups of more than a dozen important leaders. See a sneak preview here at just one leader, the dastardly Filo’ Ya, Great Hatin of The Auric. The rotund villain seeds orderly chaos through his nation and beyond.

And check out that art! This scene is just one of many new pieces Solar Studios is producing in-house or is actively commissioning. The team spends many hours every week planning the formatting of the conversion manual’s environmental images, portraits, and spot art. We’re especially happy to have just signed an agreement for more than half a dozen new environmental scenes from Ramazan Kazaliev, the artist who closely collaborated with Matt to bring you images like Scintilla, The Athenaeum, and the Sunbleak Wastes. He and other new and returning artists will be packing your books with gorgeous imagination fuel for many adventures.

Solar Studios is also proud to announce the beginning of its Kiva team page. Kiva is a 501c nonprofit organization that facilitates microloans to inspiring under-served entrepreneurs globally. Money lent by individuals and teams is provided as collateral to help communities not typically qualified for more traditional finance. The interest-free money is returned to team members’ accounts at the loan repayment’s conclusion. We encourage anyone with an interest in multiplying the effect of their charity dollars to consider joining Redsky’s team, or consider starting your own. So far, more than $1,000 has been used to help crowdfund 41 loans in 35 countries. 

Going forward, a small but mighty portion of the net profit the team makes from future projects after the 5e Conversion will help us and many other teams start or expand local businesses, fund ambitious arts and cultures projects, contribute to tuition and fees to help children to attend school, increase resources for special-needs learners, promote clean energy, and empower women and people of color to affect meaningful change in their communities around the world. We hope there is plenty of room to grow from this modest start in the coming years thanks to the possibilities of Kickstarter. Your love of pop-culture is going to make a big ripple in the world. Go team Redsky!

As always, the team is happy to answer any questions on our social media. Take a look at this new directory for the nearly 50 blog articles that dive into the lore, game mechanics, and behind the scenes extras of the team’s efforts. And if you haven’t already, redeem your first pledge reward in The Jade Feather on our website. The first full-length Redsky novel Arise is still available for early-access to all tiered backers before it will become available to purchase from major e-book retailers across the web. Avala!

We've been working hard!
about 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 01:06:30 AM

Hello again, Backers!

Apologies for the lack of news from us in recent months! It's been a busy time. We have been designing, distributing, and running our first playtest of the rules of Redsky!

Over on our Discord server we have a core group of dedicated fans, and some of them were selected to take part in this first closed beta. They have had the materials for almost a month now, and many games have been played. Now begins the information-gathering and revising stage of our work, as we send out the feedback surveys and start hammering on our carefully-crafted rules once more.

After we conclude this first rule revision, we will start building out our betas for the many Virtual Tabletop systems we plan to support, such as Shard Tabletop and Foundry. And then...

Playtest #2 will happen!

Does participating in a playtest sound fun to the non-Discord users out there? Fear not! There will be a second playtest starting toward the end of this year, and this one will be much more open. You'll be able to share the materials with your friends if they are interested, and stream your games if that's your thing! We're also planning to have some (but not all) of the VTT support ready for testing at that point, making it easy for you to run your games!

There's been a lot happening, but we won't go radio silent on you again. From this point forward, we will commit to making at least one update a month to keep our backers appraised of current development. Have we mentioned we've been working on the book artwork and layout as well? Here, have a tasty fish, courtesy of our art director Matt DeMino:

Oh, if you missed our Kickstarter, please check out our pre-order store to make a late pledge.

One final thing: thank you so much to all the members of the Discord community who participated in the playtest. Especially those who helped us find and fix typos and contributed VTT support, you know who you are!

Talk to you all soon!

Brandon Gurwitz

CEO of Solar Studios

Your First Reward Is Here! Download The Whole Redsky Novel For Free
about 3 years ago – Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 12:15:38 AM

Hi everyone! Awesome news on the Redsky front. 

I’m happy to report that the team has been able to format the electronic versions of Arise, the first Redsky novel, ahead of schedule. For anyone who backed the Kickstarter, you’ll be able to sign up to be a member of the Jade Feather section of solar-studios.com and download the full 88,000+ word preview text starting today! Visit the website here and click Log In. We need to manually approve you as a backer, so it may take a few hours. 

The text is available in several formats, including .Epub, for Kindle, and as a .PDF. I think it’s best viewed on an e-reader, phone, or tablet.

Arise has been a labor of love to write. This early access preview is coming to you well ahead of official publication, so the community’s reception will be a big factor in future plans for publishing. I’m on the hunt for representation as we speak. Please forgive any minor typos or formatting errors. Arise is in a polished enough state that I’m confident sharing it with people who have already shown their interest in this wild, wonderful setting of ours. I hope the speedy delivery of the first part of your pledge rewards shows the team’s commitment to bringing you the best possible experiences.

Tegin and Jayne’s journeys are the greatest first introduction to Dema. They were written for fans of fantasy and sci-fi anywhere from teen to wise sage. While reading speeds will vary, the average time to get through it takes less than a breezy weekend at the beach. I hope this will inspire your own adventures to come. If you have any thoughts to share after your reading, feel free to reach out. Avala!

-Tyler

Late Pledges and Playtest Signups
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jun 26, 2021 at 12:27:50 AM

Hi all! We just wanted to drop in with a quick note about a couple of things.

We've been busy with getting our Discord shaped up to better support our growing community! If you want to sign up for our playtest later in the summer, you should jump in there!

If you haven't seen, Late Pledges are also available via Backerkit. If you missed the campaign entirely, it's not too late! People who backed the Kickstarter can also upgrade their pledges, if you still want those extra add-ons like the dice, pins, and GM screen! Keep in mind that shipping will be charged later, when we send out address confirmation surveys.

Thanks for all of your support, we couldn't have done this without you all! We're already hard at work on the Redsky Core Book, and can't wait to share it with everybody!