Fablecraft News

Hello to all GMs & Mages! 🧙‍♂️✨

In this week’s blog post, we’re going to take a closer look at a brand-new monster from our upcoming Brawler Collection. We’ll also share a lore tidbit or two for those curious and review our plans for this weekend’s PAX West!

In case you missed some of our prior updates, GMs should be on the lookout for details on homebrew NPCs and last week’s Storyteller Collection, which provides a bundle of new sights and sounds to help your adventures in Mythas.

Without further adieu, let’s dive in!



[h2]A Peek at the Brawler Collection[/h2]

Our next major content release is our upcoming Brawler Collection! This pack contains new monsters and battlemaps to help bring some variety to your combat encounters.

Let’s take a peek at one of these upcoming monsters: the LEAPER QUEEN. 👑 (Please remember all the info below is WIP and may change between now and release!)

Now, if you’ve played the base game a bit, you may know of the regular ol’ Long Meadows creature, The Leaper.



Part bug, part goo, part… well, the whole thing looks both sharp and sticky, which is never a pleasant combination in battle. These enemies can swarm a Mage, leaping out of the tall grass and taking a distracted traveller by surprise.

When we started developing the Brawler Collection, we wanted to expand our base game offerings in neat ways! We wanted a new monster that made sense, would synergize well with another creature, and provide some world-building along the way. So we thought… where do Leapers come from? The answer…



The Leaper Queen is a formidable opponent, as she is a force in her own right, but also, if left alone, she will spawn additional Leapers to swarm over the battlefield. These creatures are native to the Long Meadows, using the long grass to hide and ambush their prey. Leapers will even collect Starfall and bring them to their Queen… though for what purpose still eludes most mages.

When adding a brand new creature to the game, we begin with art & mechanics, making notes like these:



The Leaper Queen and her fellow brawlers are a combination of many folks’ efforts! Between art, VFX, sound design, game mechanics, and lore/worldbuilding - a lot goes into every creature added! With these goals in mind, let’s see what abilities* the Leaper Queen will bring in battle…



*Abilities are still works in progress and may differ between now and the release!

The first ability, “Spawn Leaper,” is pretty much what it says on the tin! The Queen has the ability to spawn additional combatants, which should keep even the most prepared Mages on their toes.

Her second ability, “Mama’s Love,” will buff a Leaper and turn them from a regular minion into something more formidable. The Leaper Queen *definitely* plays favourites with her children.

These two abilities can rapidly change a combat encounter and tie in well with a monster from our base game! We aim to have these collections expand on our existing content in neat ways and provide new opportunities for GMs to expand on the world of Mythas in ways we might not even anticipate! Be sure to keep an eye out for its release date very soon, and hop into our Discord to get more sneak peeks and info.



[h2]PAX West 2024[/h2]



Some of the Riftweaver Team is at PAX West this weekend! We are at Booth 4505, and we’ll be selling our content packs and giving away some freebies. Of course, you can also say hi to some of the friendly folks working on the game! 👋

We’re hosting a contest to name one of our monsters! You can enter in-person or online here. We will choose two winners daily (one from both types of entry), with the prize being a code for the Brawler Collection! Your name submission also has the chance of becoming the official in-game name as well! 🎉







For Tales of Fablecraft, we created a new setting for our players to immerse themselves in called Mythas. If you’re an aspiring GM 🎲 or a player who loves to read lore 📚, be sure to check out our Book of Mythas! We’ll share excerpts from it on social media and in our Discord every week, but if you want to dive right in, we have just the PDF for you!



That’s it for this week! Please follow us on social media to keep up with the latest, and hop into our Discord to chat with the dev team, find groups for adventures, and share tips with fellow GMs.

We hope you have a great weekend, and we’ll see you in Seattle & Mythas!

PS: Let’s leave you with one more peek at what else is coming in the Brawler Collection…

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Greetings, Mages! 🧙

Today's update is incredibly short. With v0.16.1 of Tales of Fablecraft, we're performing a quick patch that enables code redemption for specific pieces of content.

[h2]The Complete Tales of Fablecraft v0.16.X Patch Notes[/h2]

Features

• We're at PAX West, and we're selling some limited edition Fablecraft cards that feature codes for in-game content. This update ensures the codes on those cards work... instead of not working.
  

Hello, Mages! 🧙

In this week’s dev blog and vlog, we’re sharing our plans for custom NPCs in Fablecraft. We always had custom NPCs on our internal roadmap, but we’ve raised its priority significantly after seeing the response and demand for the feature within our community after we launched into Early Access this past July.

We’re here today with this set of planned features because of your feedback. So! Thank you for sounding off about custom NPCs early and often.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Before we get into it, please note that most of the screenshots in this post come from the design stages of development. The UI and functionality might change between now and the feature release, though the core principles should remain the same. Don’t be surprised if things look slightly different once they’re in your hands.

Let’s begin.

[h2]Options for custom NPCs will come in waves[/h2]

This is some inside baseball stuff, but we wanted to take a second to share a peek at our internal workflow to help illustrate why features are delivered in the rolling fashion we’ll discuss today.

Like most studios, we’re a studio that uses a heavily modified version of Agile to track, complete, and deliver work. We chunk tasks so that they can be assigned to a developer on our team in two-week chunks. Those two-week chunks are called sprints; single features typically come after a sprint or two are complete.

The short version of that for you? We’re delivering features as we have them ready rather than releasing them all at once way down the line. It means we’re iterating quickly, and you’re getting a Fablecraft that evolves a lot over the course of a single month or year.

[h2]First up, getting the GM’s heroes in the side tray[/h2]

We’re starting with a relatively easy win that opens the gate for a more robust system. In early to mid-September, we’ll make it so GMs will find their heroes in the side tray during their campaign play.



The idea is that GMs will use the current character creator to build a Mage, complete with a custom portrait, to serve as an NPC in their games. Functionally, these Mages will behave like PCs; they’ll be able to level up and have inventory, and GMs can define their allegiance and use their combat kits in battle.

We think this is a solid first step, and we’re actively developing and testing it now. We’re on pace to deliver it in a few weeks...ish.

[h2]Copy & Customize to follow in short order[/h2]

Next up? We’re giving GMs the ability to Copy & Customize existing Fablecraft Friends and Foes, and we’re set to deliver this one in late September or early October.

GMs will be able to open their side tray, navigate to the Friends and Foes area, right-click an NPC, and select Copy & Customize. From there, they’ll have a dupe of a creature or humanoid that they can customize with a homebrew portrait, description, and name. This lets players use existing combat ability kits to create NPCs.



Functionally, you’ll be able to Copy & Customize a Shadow Bandit and make them a generic ranger-type friend or foe for battle and story scenes. That includes all of the Shadow Bandit’s attacks and their animations.



There will be some early-dev funkiness for this, of course. You can Copy & Customize the Highland Dragon, for example, but that means you’ll take all of its attack animations to the new NPC you create, including the 3D model for its head. This is temporary; our goal is to let GMs choose from the whole pool of existing animations for each attack.

[h2]The future features full-on customization[/h2]

Want even more customization? It’s coming.

We intend to deliver completely custom NPCs to Fablecraft. That means a custom character sheet with homebrew stats, abilities, and attacks. This is a significant feature with a ton of nuance in game design and UI/UX. These features take a while to cook because we want to ensure the homebrew experience is intuitive and seamless. We’re working to make homebrew features that encourage GM creativity without needing an extensive tutorial explaining how to use our tools.

Rest assured that it’s on our roadmap and a high priority. We'll share that information with you as soon as we’re ready to lock into a time frame for the feature release.

Thank you for being a player, and thank you for your feedback. If you have a feature request or want to make sure an addition or change gets to the top of our priority list, be sure to check out our feedback board and submit and upvote requests.

Join our Discord to find your next party or ask our team a question. We’ll see you soon!

Greetings, Mages! 🧙

The Storyteller Collection is officially available in Tales of Fablecraft. Grab the most recent update to find the collection and navigate to the marketplace.

The collection arrives as part of the v0.16.0 update, and you'll find those patch notes towards the end of this post.

[h2]What’s included in the Storyteller Collection?[/h2]



The Storyteller Collection provides GMs with an expanded array of music, soundscapes, and scenes to inspire fresh, thrilling adventures. We’ve collaborated with a talented group of artists to assemble a fantastic set of environments for your upcoming campaigns.

This collection includes ten unique environments (including three with variants), five captivating music tracks, and ten immersive soundscapes.



We’re also still working hard on the Brawler Collection, which features a pile of creatures and battlemaps, and we’ll have that ready for September.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a group of players to run a new adventure with, join our Discord.

Now, those patch notes.

[h2]The Complete Tales of Fablecraft v0.16.0 Patch Notes[/h2]

Features

• The Storyteller Collection is available in the marketplace. ✨ It features 10 new environments, 5 music tracks, and 10 soundscapes.
  
• We’ve added a content code redemption box to the Marketplace, too. This will be helpful for some code-based stuff we’re doing in the future, including the Friends of Fablecraft program that we’ll detail soon. Also, if you’re a Kickstarter backer and never redeemed your codes for content, this redemption button will work for you, too!
  
• We’ve made some changes to the filtering system across environments and the jukebox, making navigation simpler and cleaner for GMs.
  

Bug Fixes

• We fixed a bug where GM Demo voiceover didn’t match the actual text in the dialogue boxes.
  
• We fixed a bug affecting the power stat boost provided by the Manor Key in the
• House in the Manor* adventure.
  

Known Issues

• Players can't give or discard inventory items through their character sheets. This can only be done through the inventory panel. This known issue will be fixed in a future update.
  

Welcome to another dev blog for Tales of Fablecraft, Mages! 🧙

In this week’s update, we’ll take a closer look at the Storyteller Collection that’s set to launch next week. We’ll share some of its contents, touch on the Brawler Collection, and dig into price points.

Before we get into the collection’s details, the Storyteller Collection will launch on August 22nd, 2024. We’ll make the announcement on Discord as soon as it’s live, so if you want that immediate notification, you should join us!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Let’s begin.

[h2]What’s included in the Storyteller Collection?[/h2]

The Storyteller Collection offers GMs more music, soundscapes, and scenes to spin new adventurous yarns. We’ve worked with another roster of incredible artists to put together a fantastic collection of environments for your future adventures.

This collection includes 10 environments (three with variants), five music tracks, and 10 soundscapes.



You’ll be able to combine the meandering music with the tavern scene above and a fantastically satisfying kitchen soundscape. Fun fact, our own Cody Uhler and Ross Wariner spent a day making a clatter in a kitchen for that track, and the result is both cozy and captivating. The artwork for the tavern scene was done by Isabeau Backhaus.



If you’re looking to tell a tale that plumbs the depths of the ocean floor, we have the perfect starting point for your party’s exploits. Meet the Depths Entrance, a port of call that boasts an entire underwater playground. The artwork for the Depths Entrance was done by David Frasheski.



Or, maybe you want a platform worthy of a visit from a Woodland Dragon (coming soon in the Brawler Collection)? This stunning scene was done by Kent Davis.

[h2]What about the Brawler Collection?[/h2]

The Brawler Collection is still coming! We initially intended to release both collections on the same day, but the 3D visual effects for the creatures and their attacks are being finalized as I put together this dev blog. We’re anticipating the Brawler Collection will land in the first couple weeks of September once we return from PAX West.

We’ll be at PAX West, by the way! Come grab a sticker and say hello!

[h2]Here’s how much both collections will cost[/h2]

As promised in a dev blog and vlog a few weeks ago, we’re ready to share the price points for the Storyteller and Brawler Collections.

The Storyteller Collection will sell for $9.99, and the Brawler Collection will sell for $14.99.

In case you missed that previous pricing discussion, the reason for the pricing difference comes down to the scope of work involved with each collection. The Storyteller Collection features 10 commissioned story scenes–several with variants–and new music and soundscapes, so it represents a strong collection of art that we priced at $9.99.

The Brawler Collection is priced at $14.99 because it features roughly double the commissioned art and designed combat abilities, unique 3D animations, and custom sound effects for 14 different creatures. Those 3D animations, especially, take a considerable amount of effort from our team.



We hope you love both collections as much as we do! Personally, I can’t get over the Jewel Beetle.

That’s it for this week’s dev blog! Be sure to grab the Storyteller Collection when it drops next week, and join our Discord to find your next party.

👋