State of GTG - April 2018

Greetings! It is once again the time of the month when I update you about the goings on at Greater Than Games! I believe that we are currently the busiest we have ever been here at GTG, which is really saying something! Here's a list of various things we accomplished in the past month:

1. Made a bunch of updates to the Patreon for The Letters Page.
2. We started live streams for a bunch of things, including weekly play-throughs of games with Maggie and the upcoming Sentinel Comics Live RPG with Christopher!
3. We created our Gen Con schedule and submitted our Gen Con events.
4. We had several large, complicated meetings about the Core Rulebook for Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game.
5. Mara and I attended the GAMA trade show in Reno.
6. Jenn commissioned a massive volume of art for the Sentinel Comics RPG.
7. We re-arranged a number of offices at GTG HQ to make more space for future growth.
8. Matt and Jodie cleared our warehouse backlog and began prep for the OblivAeon ship out.
9. Matt and Jodie began warehouse/packing prep for Gen Con.
10. Christopher did a bunch of work on Sentinels of Earth Prime.
11. Adam drew a ton of art for the Sentinel Comics RPG Core Rulebook
12. I met with a bunch of contractors and architects.
13. Christopher worked with Underbite Studio to polish the Kickstarter page for Sentinels of Freedom.

Here is the status of all of our works in progress!

In Stock Since January

1. Nothing!

Shipping to Backers

1. Nothing!

In Transit; Waiting For A Boat

1. Spirit Island (even more)
2. Spirit Island: Branch & Claw reprint
3. SotM: Core Game reprint
4. SotM: Vengeance reprint

Completed Mass Production; In China

1. SotM: Stuntman, Benchmark, & Void Guard
2. SotM: Complete Hero Variant Collection
3. SotM: Ultimate Collector's Case
4. SotM: 5th Anniversary Foil Villain Collection

In Mass Production

1. Spirit Island (even even more)
2. Spirit Island: Branch & Claw reprint
3. Spirit Island: Promo Spirit Pack reprint
4. SotM: OblivAeon
5. The giant OblivAeon KS shipping cartons.
6. New Bedford reprint
7. SotM: Shattered Timelines & Wrath of the Cosmos reprint
8. Various SotM mini-expansion reprints

At Factory; Pre-Press Work

1. Nothing!

Current WIP Focus by GTG

1. Sentinel Comics: The Role Playing Game core rulebook (Christopher, Jenn, Critical Hits)
2. Prime War (Christopher)
3. Sentinels of Earth Prime (Christopher)
4. Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Chris Kirkman + Jenn)
5. Spirit Island expansion (Paul + Christopher + Jenn)
6. Sentinels of Freedom video game (Christopher + Adam)
7. A new and improved website (Jenn, Paul, Joel, etc)
8. The History of Sentinel Comics (Christopher, Adam)

I'll see you next month!

Thanks, Paul! Great stuff. 

Is that the 4th or 5th print run of Spirit Island?! 

I notice "A cool Sentinel Comics related thing" has been replaced with "The History of Sentinel Comics."

Does this mean it's safe to assume "The History of Sentinel Comics" is the cool Sentinel Comics thing?

I love that these monthly updates make it look like I'm not doing anything. :-) If the shoe fits, I guess...

I think we need a monthly post from Craig on what he's been working on. Craig's Corner! :D

You've been entertaining us on Facebook; I consider that valuable.

Craig, I assume you herd cats. That or are dealing with all the con stuff and managing volunteers. Oh, you also started a Facebook live feed that Christopher tramples over.

It must be a tough problem to constantly having to print Spirit Island stuff. I can't wait for the Kickstarter, It better be this year. My Friends have told me to let them know when it is happening.

Sorry Craig!

Craig has been doing monthly Facebook livestreams and collecting Citizens for all of our upcoming shows, as well as a bunch of customer service stuff :)

@rjc917 You're correct :)

On one hand, that's a bit disappointing, since we've known for months that they were working on that.  On the other hand, it would be nice to get that in 2018 along with the RPG.

I thought the history bit was going to be part of the RPG honestly.  

Architects! That sounds exciting.

**Sigh**

Good new: the boxes are printed.

Bad new: OblivAeon still isn't.

I guess OblivAeon's episode in the Letter Pages will be delayed too.

@Hankroyd

At this rate I don't believe it will be. Most people should have gotten or be getting their stuff in July when the episodes are currently scheduled to air, so we plan to stick to that schedule unless something dramatic changes.

There is a bunch of stuff to be happy about in this update! I noticed a Spirit Island expansion is now an official thing and Prime War is moving up in priority.

Thanks for your answer, Paul.

I keep my finger crossed ! 

I admit that buying Spirit Island for my own amusement has gotten tempting after seeing the LoadingReadyRun folks streamplaying it last month.

Jesyie, you got TTS? I can teach you the game in that. It is a fun game and everyone should buy it.

In fact, @jeysie - if you've got time tonight/now-ish (about 7:45 PM your time), I'll happily jump on and teach you now if you've got TTS.

@Paul and @Maggie - I've said this on the Kickstarter update page, but I'm a person for whom the live-stream update thing just really. doesn't. work. at. all. Çould I please request that live-stream updates be either alternated with, or done simultanesouly with on the same topic as, straight-text (with still photos as applicable) ones? Please?

I'm not sure what you mean by Prime War moving up in priority. It's been #2 on the list since State of GTG - September 2017. Also I'm not sure this is really a priority list per se, as Paul describes in the initial rundown how Christopher did a bunch of work on Sentinels of Earth Prime, but no there's no info on Prime War.

Christopher has a group working on Tactics(rip) and they are chugging along. The game is changing a lot and there is activity in the playtest forums. I am not sure If they announced the people working on it. ( I just overheard it at PAX Unplugged)

But I don't see it happening this year. WIth Sentinels of Freedom, the RPG and Spirit Island being kick-started this year it is hard to fit another game in this IP this year. *I am not sure If the Spirit Island is being kick-started this year if they push it to next year, Tactics(rip) has space to be kick-started.* But let us face it Spirit Island is doing well so now is the time to strike and make more of that game.

Sentinels of Earth Prime is going to be a year late. I am sure they are catching heat on that one. The good thing is that Adam doesn't need to do art for that one.

Hmm, my wallet is quite pleased with the news that the "cool Sentinels Comics related thing" and the "History of Sentinels Comis" are the same thing, but I'd be lying if I said my soul weren't disappointed.

@speedyolrac, @jffdougan - How do you actually use TTS?  I picked it up during the last big Steam Sale, along with the Scythe DLC, and despite going through the tutorial, can't figure out how to actually start playing a game once I've launched it.  Are there any good resources you know of?  (Specific to Scythe would be great, but I'll take anything at this point.) 

I thought it was lower on the list in previous months. But I haven’t been antsy for it, so I haven’t kept a close watch. I could be wrong.

@speedyolrac, @jffdougan: It's more that I have to admit it's still hard to swallow spending $80 on something only I'll get to use... but... I love LoadingReadyRun from their Magic: the Gathering stuff and Cameron is one of my faves so of course I had to watch the stream, and now I have to admit the game is incredibly shiny.

And I own Tabletop Simulator but I admit I despair at ever learning it well enough to actually play a game through all the way. It feels like Surgeon Simulator for board games. The last time I played, during setup I was trying to lift a Sentinels playmat to retrieve a character card that had inexplicably decided to disappear under it when I tried to set the card down and in the process I managed to accidentally throw the entire table and its contents across the room instead and so decided I was going to shelve the program entirely for now and move onto other vidya games for a while.

Don't really see how that's disappointing. The history book has been mentioned several times and places but was never mentioned on the timeline. That was a big ol' clue revealing that it was most likely the secret thing anyway.

Just as we know OblivAeon is coming, so is it's episode. Just chill and enjoy the ride, along with all the episode we'll get before then.

I wasn't intending to criticize the status of Prime Wars in my post, just observing that interpreting the WIP list as a priority list may be an error. 

I've been wondering this too.  I have TTS, but I've never actually played a game on there.  I'm not even sure how to get Spirit Island on it, since it's not listed amongst the DLC.

You actually want to check out the Steam Workshop for TTS.

As far as I'm aware, isn't there a tutorial somewhere on the startup screen of TTS?

Spirit Island is a super-fun game to play solo. It's by far my favorite solo game. The players at the One-Player Guild on BoardGameGeek are also incredibly enthusiastic about it. If that possibility appeals to you, I'd encourage you to try it out. (And you should be able to get it for well less than $80, once the reprint comes in.)

The last time I played, during setup I was trying to lift a Sentinels playmat to retrieve a character card that had inexplicably decided to disappear under it when I tried to set the card down and in the process I managed to accidentally throw the entire table and its contents across the room instead and so decided I was going to shelve the program entirely for now and move onto other vidya games for a while.
I have no experience with TTS, but the image of flipping the table in a virtual game is just too good.

Yeah, TTS is all about subscribing to workshop mods and then opening those to play. I recommend configuring them to your liking afterward and then saving a game state. :B

Yeah, that's what I did - find in the Workshop where someone has made Spirit Island and subscribe to that, load it in Tabletop Sim and then highlight and save each set of compoments, decks, etc as separate objects, then load a blank table and spawn in the components needed at the start of a game. Then save it, and use that save when I want to start a new game of Spirit Island. I've done the same with Sentinels - I have all the decks saved as separate objects but the Sentinels "gaming table" is just a large table with some of the electronic counter thingys (which I use for hp, much easier than dice when you're playing with a mouse cursor instead of your fingers ;)) and three randomiser bags, one each for Heroes, Villains, and Environments - the latter just has a random card from each deck while the other two contain all the character cards for their respective deck types. Then I just spawn in the needed decks from my saved components as needed. It means the table takes a lot less time to load than if you save it with everything on it :). In the case of Spirit Island I just start with one each of things like Dahan huts, Invader pieces, Beasts, etc, because I can just copy/paste them as needed :).

There is an actual dedicated "Flip Table" button, which is pretty amusing.

In this case, though, it was actually "trying to pick up the card somehow caused the entire table to come with it, which then accidentally sent it flying when I moved the cursor".

I should note that none of this is me saying the game is terribly programmed, just that it is very direct control about the physics and it has a nuance I am having hilarious failures in getting the hang of.

Stuff like that happens sometimes. <.< What I experience more often is cards flipping or being placed on the play mat and sinking through it. You play something, go to another play area to resolve some effect, then go back for a game of Where Did That Card Go?

Should we wait for next week to expect a May update?

Nope! I'm just a couple of days behind :)