Shipping Begins & Continues to Roll Out
about 6 years ago – Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 12:39:27 AM

Hi Everyone,

So I spoke with the fulfillment company and the warehouse provided the following photos of orders packaged and ready. 

Also, the first of the shipments began leaving the warehouse on Friday. 

Apologies for the delay, there was some miscommunication around status and then an inability to clarify simply due to workers at the warehouse having left for the weekend.

My goal for the next update is to share the total number of shipments that have left the warehouse.



Until Next Update,
Brian

Fulfillment Status & Daily Updates
about 6 years ago – Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 09:07:32 PM

Hi Everyone,

Brian here. I understand that people are anxious to hear more regular updates. To that end, this marks the first of a series of updates that I will be sending out each weekday evenings (MST - US time, where I’m located). The next update will be tomorrow (Friday MST evening). From here until the last of the shipments have departed the warehouse, we will be updating the status every weekday. The fulfillment warehouse will be communicating status about the fulfillment / shipping process to me daily, which will compose the bulk of the updates I’ll be sending.

I’ve just gotten off the phone with the fulfillment company. There were delays in the fulfillment / shipping process which have been addressed. The sheer volume of orders has ended up being overwhelming and sorting through all of it at the warehouse took longer than expected. The company handling fulfillment fully admits that these delays in shipping were not effectively communicated to me. As such, I had no information to then communicate to you. I apologize. I was under the impression that the situation was in hand, but I was wrong, so I’ll be proactive about obtaining status updates and sharing them going forward.

Also, the timeline on this process was not properly communicated by the shipping / fulfillment company. Sadly, it is not 100% possible to guarantee an exact date that the product will arrive, but you will know where the process is going forward.

Shipping labels are set to be printed this Friday. Shipment will follow. Not immediately, but not long after. There are 64 unique combinations of products that people have ordered, those combinations with the largest bulk will be shipping first.

Being that there are 2,000 shipments going out, it seems that it’s not possible to simply get all of the items turned around and shipped out within a few days. If you’re like me, this is not something that you were entirely clear on. I get it now, but I had previously assumed that turnaround would be a few days. I was wrong about that so I probably gave that impression as a result of my own misunderstanding. The size of the shipment was not the only cause for delay however, there was a bottleneck in the process of getting fulfillment / packing complete, which has since been cleared. Shipments will go out in waves, as I said, largest bulk orders going out first. Shipping labels being printed on Friday means that those orders are completed packing and will move along to be shipped soon after.

I imagine I’ll be a broken record saying this daily for a little while here, but truly, I apologize for how long this is taking… we will let you know once that first wave of orders leaves the warehouse and in the meantime, send out daily updates to confirm that the fulfillment process is still following the anticipated trajectory… on Friday we will know if that first wave of shipments is packed, has shipping labels, and is ready to move out soon after…

Brian

Packing of Boxes Continues, Shipping to Begin "Soon" (Hopefully)
about 6 years ago – Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 06:03:27 PM

Hello All,

Lucus here. I made a brief comment to this yesterday, but I wanted to make a proper Update for everyone now.

Sorry too upfront, my contact at the company that's doing the distribution of the books had mentioned trying to get me photos from the warehouse of our books all neatly stacked and packed, but alas, no photos yet.

When Do the Books Ship?

So the short and simple version is -- "The books & cards & maps are in the process of being packaged up, but they're not ready to be sent quite yet." 

My contact wouldn't put a firm date on any of it, BUT he promised to call me the day they were done packaging them up and finally ready to label the boxes for shipment. He expects this day to be in the next week or so, though the Easter holiday here in the US is likely to disrupt the process. Assuming he was right though, by mid-to-end of next week the books et al will be packed up and ready for labels, and likely April 2nd or so they'll apply the labels (for 2,000+ orders this will likely take 2 days just to do alone) and be sending books out! *fingers crossed*

Whether that happens exactly as expected is anyone's guess though. They did explain that part of problem for the company is basically we gave you all too many options for how to order things! For the 2000+ backers as of today, there are 176 variations of "Open Legend RPG with-or-without Amaurea's Dawn with-or-without Boon/Bane Cards with-or-without Special Copies with-or-without Maps, etc" and so rather than having only a dozen or so "sets" like they're used to for a Kickstarter, they've had to sort through 176 sets of orders (each, then, needing different size packaging etc., compounding the issue).

But, the day my contact calls me, you call expect to see an Update that explains "what happens next and when do you get your books, likely with tracking numbers!" *fingers crossed again*

What About the Stretch Goal PDFs?

On this front, news is good/better. Ryan, the Narrative Director here at Seventh Sphere, has all the texts written and they're off with our editor, each getting sent to Brian and I as they're completed.

The first fully edited manuscript is currently in Brian's possession, and even better, he has not only the art but also the cover design SO we just need to "put them all together" in layout and the first of these (a shorty story) will be made available to you all via BackerKit.

Once we have a PDF ready, I'll make an Update and explain for everyone how to get their copy of that book and all future ones.

As for future PDFs, the big time drain as of now is getting the art back. We've got some incredible artists we're working with, but we also have a very clear vision of how each of these books should look -- so Brian and Ryan have sent back pieces a few times now to tweak this, or add color here, or adjust the design of this to match some other existing piece better, etc. Its fine detail work that just simply takes time, BUT its done to make sure you all get the best possible product at the end of the day.

So, I will admit this is a non-update Update, but we're very hopeful to change that soon!

As always, your continued patience with us is greatly appreciated and we're all looking forward to having hardcopies of everything in our hands and a our tables!

Lucus Palosaari, Project Manager

Books Have Arrived at the Warehouse!
about 6 years ago – Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 09:17:22 PM

Hey Friends!

Sorry that Customs wasn't as quick as I'd been optimistically hoping, but I do have good news for you. The books have finally arrived at the printer's warehouse in the US. They will be shipped out directly from there, so no worries about a disappointing "extra step" in the process. From here, all that needs to happen is for the 1,993 backers orders to get packaged up and then shipped off. 

One question we've got is from non-US backers is about shipping origin. Yes, shipping is originating in the US and will take however long it takes to get from the US to your location. Not much we can do about that, sadly. 

Below is a photo of our friendly neighborhood printer / shipping / fulfillment folks packaging up your products for delivery to leave their factory quite soon!

Kickstarter stretch goal rewards will begin to go out via BackerKit digital rewards distribution soon. We've got a handful of items near completion and will send a more formal release schedule out soon.


With love and gratitude (for not having been lynched by you good people yet!),
Brian

Shipping Status, Stretch Goals Update!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 12:04:55 AM

Jan 2018 Update!

Hi Open Legend Fam,

We'd like to apologize for the silence, lots going on behind the scenes that we will try to explain to you briefly now, and a lot of us "waiting" -- waiting to get replies to requests, waiting to find out where the books are, and just overall a lot taking time.

First Up -- Where Are My Books? In our last update, we said the books were shipping Dec 4th from Taiwan. They have made the long, slow journey across the ocean and are presently "stuck in customs" according to our distributor here in the States. How long that process takes isn't clear to us as we've been waiting at least a week, and even then, they need to be shipped across country to their facility before they can send them out to all you fine people.

We have received an update from our printer earlier today stating that about half of the products are already in their warehouse, but they are waiting for the rest to arrive. Some people have expressed the sentiment "How could Customs possibly take so long?" ... We hear you, we are frustrated by the delays as well, however, the truth is that some of the products (the ones you're mainly interested in, the BOOKS) really are still in Customs. Port and Customs congestion (even as long as it's been) is common during the beginning of the year.

In anticipation of the moment the books arrive at the distributors, we've been finalizing addresses on the BackerKit and doing everything we can on our end to "be ready" when they give us the go ahead. Once they receive the books, we send them the addresses, and they send them out -- you should get tracking and other information and the MOMENT we know this stuff for certain, we'll make a big update all about "how it works."

But, as far as we've been told, all is well and "these things just take time," and we're sorry you are having to wait for your hardcopies of the books, cards, etc.

Secondly -- Where are the Stretch Goals at? Moving along well! While we've all been waiting for the books to arrive, the team has not been idle! Ryan has been working with our team of writers to draft all the various Stretch Goals and Brian, in an effort to "not slow things down" (more on that in a moment) has made sure to contract with a layout expert to have templates created and have them on retainer so that as the various artists turn in their final copies to us we can move those with the edited manuscripts Ryan and his team have and get things posted as soon as possible.

Presently, art & text for Names for Prey (The House Nivenilya short story) is "nearly ready" and should all be turned in by the first weeks of February. Once in, finalized, and approved, we'll pass them off for layout and they should be made available via BackerKit near instantly. Crafting the text and getting the art completed takes time, and the layout should be quick, but Names for Prey should be available by no later than mid-February. The next stretch goal -- Mind in Flight (House Nivenilya full length adventure) -- is similarly on the last steps and we should have that done by early March, and on and on till all of them are delivered. The delay of a single writer, artist, editor, or designer "throws off" this whole process and it truly does "take a team effort" to make these things and that is part of why this process is taking so long.

Thirdly -- What's up with Seventh Sphere Publishing overall? So, previously we've posted about all of the things going on with our main-man Brian. Between personal issues and a recent decision to move across country for work and health reasons, he's realized more and more he needed to "build a team he could trust" to do this work. Part of hiring on a layout person as well as the whole point of having Ryan as Narrative Director is so that all this work doesn't need to come to a screeching halt just because Brian can't approve of some minor adjustment. To that end, a lot of the "secretarial" and just paper-shuffling side of things has been offloaded to a new Project Manager, Lucus Palosaari. If you've been posting here or messaging us at [email protected] (still the BEST way to get an immediate response from us) you've been in communication with him. Lucus is trying to handle a lot of the minor requests and papershuffling (like updating your addresses, keeping BackerKit updated, and responding to comments and emails as they come in) but he works for and with Brian, once again to ease that burden. Managing Seventh Sphere Publishing and our Kickstarter goals has a lot of moving parts and more and more, Brain is realizing he's better off letting various experts in their disciplines "handle" matters while he just oversees. This transition over the past few months has taken a bit of time, but Lucus will be sure to be more active on Kickstarter and BackerKit to your questions and comments -- even if those answers end up needing to be "We don't have a clear answer for that, because we're waiting on..." Finally -- Other Comments

Someone asked about signed copies. We are using endsheets for signing. Each signature will be a genuine signature of the creators (Matthew Mercer, Ed Greenwood, Ryan Schapals, Brian Feister, and Ish Stabosz) not "done by machine" and then these endsheets will be incorporated into the "signed copies" of the book. These were signed and delivered to the printer for binding over 3 months ago.

Add-ons like the Bane & Boon cards, and such will be shipped out with the main shipment of books. These things have previously been printed and just waiting for their main books. The only exception here is the GM Screens, which have lagged behind the other items in production and will follow, will update with a date on that as soon as we have one.

Brian has received an advance shipment of just a few of the Open Legend Core Rules and Amaurea's Dawn books and they turned out wonderful! 

We had really hoped that the books would have arrived before the end of this month at the distributor, but they have not. Brian, as mentioned before, is moving across country for the first part of February, and while a whole team is backing him up, some things are likely to just need to wait till he is back to "go live" or "be approved" etc.

This isn't the update you were hoping for, nor is it the one we were hoping to have to make, but that's the current situation. Things ARE progressing. We will have stretch goals met shortly. You will have your books shipped out as soon as they can be.

Its all too common from Kickstarter, so sorry to tell you the same old story, but "please be patient" is really all we can say. 

Below we've attached a copy of a letter written today from the CEO of our printers, explaining that Customs delays (even of this length) are simply par for the course.

Thank you for your patience,

Seventh Sphere Publishing Team