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Our Golden Age: An Ultraviolet Grasslands RPG []equel

Created by Exalted Funeral

Experience fantascience roleplaying at the end of time. Escape the end of history. The eternal civilization is perfect. So say the gods, the machines. Will you defy the endless circle of awakening and forgetting? Can you kick a hole through the sky?

Latest Updates from Our Project:

All Pledge Surveys Sent PLUS a Work in Progress PDF!
5 days ago – Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 12:43:54 PM

Hello backers!

A quick update about the pledge manager and the first PDF!




Pledge Manager Survey


All pledge manager surveys have now been sent out to all backers. Thanks so much for your patience with that! If you have any questions or need assistance with your survey please reach out to us at [email protected].

The Pre-order Store is also now open. If you are a backer, be sure to access add-ons only through for survey as going through the pre-order store will create an additional pledge instead of accessing your original survey. 



WIP PDF


We have also sent out the first work in progress PDF of the Equipment Chapter from The Vastlands Guidebook!



All backers with The Vastlands Guidebook as part of their pledge should have received an email informing you of this file in your pledge manager survey. Please reach out to us if you need help accessing it. 

Thanks so much and Happy Holidays!

-The Exalted Funeral Crew

Updates From the Book Mines 2: Green Maps and Vastlands Copyediting
15 days ago – Tue, Dec 03, 2024 at 11:10:40 AM

Noble backers, kind Goldenagers,

Welcome to another thrilling update from the book mines.

Weeks 8 and 9 were pretty much spent polishing off the Green Land section. Sometimes this kind of work can get a bit unpredictable - I struggled for a long time with how to visualize the distorted space-time of the Metropolis / Portal City. When the muse finally gave me the solution, she demanded I create a map to do it justice and that, well, that took 3 or 4 days of work.

Weeks 10 and 11, by contrast, had me applying the learnings from the Green Land section to the VLG layout. The good news is ... it works! The mildly annoying news is ... it takes it's time. Anyway, having gotten that nailed down and having worked through through the initial VLG feedback, we've signed a contract with Brandes S, who also did editing on the UVG 2E. The editing pass starts ... this week. Once that’s done I’ll be able to start bolting down the final layout and adding spot art. We’ll share the revised pdf once the editing is done, but before the final spot art is finished.



***







HERE'S THE WEEK BY WEEK:

***

Week 13 - Nov 25–24
  • VLG Work: I finished off the equipment section restructuring. There was a bit more revising here than I’d initially thought. I wasn’t completely happy with how I handled upgrades in UVG, so I restructured those into separate spreads. Effectively, there’s more strange and exotic items for you to enjoy now. Later this week I'll apply the edits to the first chapter and tighten the layout there. I think we're over halfway there with this book's final layout.
  • VLG Art: I even colored a few pieces because I couldn’t help myself.
  • US Thanksgiving: Happy thanksgiving! I also took a bit of time off to spend with family.


***

Week 12 - Nov 18–24
  • VLG Work: call with Brandes on Monday to hammer out the details. Brandes edited the first chapter (character creation). Luka revised the equipment chapter to use tables and updated art. Created custom chapter footer art, so each footer will be easier to pick out in the book.
  • VLG Art: Including a few new art pieces because of course that happened.
  • Did You Know: When you update your operating system, the way some fonts render in InDesign can change, and you may have to adjust your cell style text padding by 0.35mm to keep everything neat and aligned? Yeah, I didn’t know this either.


***

Week 11 - Nov 11–17
  • VLG Tables: I’ve been working on implementing the tables from OGA within VLG. This is pretty fiddly work, which comes down to getting table, cell, paragraph and character styles all working together. However, the result is nice and consistent tables throughout the book. The layout muse taketh and giveth.
  • VLG Art: spot art, headers, test spreads, revisions.









***

Week 10 - Nov 4–10
  • OGA Work: finished the Green Land final layout test, assembled all the sections. Initial inking on final box art, incorporating the metropolis portal one map.
  • VLG Work: reviewing typohunter feedback and preparing document for copy editing.
  • News from the Printers: good news from the printers — my setup for the cover art works with the foil test, so the voidwalker covers will work exactly as I planned.
  • Foliage: went to see an ancient gingko tree




***

Week 10 - Nov 4–10
  • OGA Work: finally finished the Green Land final layout test, assembled all the sections. Initial inking on final box art, incorporating the metropolis portal one map.
  • VLG Work: reviewing typohunter feedback and preparing document for copy editing.
  • Foliage: went to see an ancient gingko tree


***

Week 9 - Oct 28 to Nov 3
  • OGA Work: challenge: how to visualize the portal city / distorted spacetime within the great Emerald City? Solution: draw a map. Problem: to do it justice takes time.
  • OGA Map: Portal One, the great spiralling city. Well, that took 3 days to draw.
  • OGA Art: the airmaker, the time ponds, the portalspace diagram, the coalem, the ministerial estates, the dispensary
  • A bit frustrating, but I didn’t finish the Green Land by Friday as I’d hoped.


***

Week 8 - Oct 21–27
  • OGA Work: Green Land stylings. Cogflower exchequer
  • VLG Work: Cleaned up resources / replenishing section


***

Pledge Manager Update

Thanks for your patience with the pledge manager! We anticipate the surveys to go out to backers this week. We will have another short update once they have all gone out. We can then start making preview PDFs available to backers via the pledge manager.

Ok, that's it for this update! This was a bit later and longer. Next one coming soon.
—Luka

Updates From the Book Mines 1: Layouts and Labyrinths
2 months ago – Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 05:59:18 PM

Dear Goldenagers, noble backers,

I'd planned on including this update from the book mine in the pledge manager update from the EF crew so your inboxes don't get swamped, but some of the backend work is fiddly (UPDATE COMING EARLY NEXT WEEK WITH PLEDGE MANAGER START DATE! 😊). Definitely fiddlier than I understand, being just a pixel pixie. Thus—this is just a "Luka making stuff" update (this one's a bit late, next one will be a bit early).

BROAD STROKES:
Over the next months I'll be (I) finishing the books, then (II) all the other content for the campaign. See [far] below for the week-by-week breakdown of work. 

STAYING INFORMED:
(1) Once a month (every four weeks of work) an update from the book mines in the style of this post. I'll respond to comments on these posts.
(2) On my stratometaship patreon, I post roughly every two weeks, sharing illustrations, pdfs, cast-off bits of content.
(3) On the stratometaship discord (https://discord.gg/bDcc9WYus5) I offer a much closer look behind the scenes, with regular screenshots, pdfs, snippets, creative anguish, and more.

Again! Behold item (1) above. I don’t expect you to sign up for a discord server, much less join a patreon, to stay au courant! You'll be getting nice, compiled summaries once a month and I'm here in the comments.

Take care and welcome to Pumpkin Season.

—Luka.

***

NOW WEEK BY WEEK:

***

Week 7 - Oct 14–21
  • OGA Work: revising draft and laying out the Green Land region (that’s the one with the big living city and butcher bankers and ... well, see attached file for the first half—I wrote this update on a Wednesday). I’m testing the structure I setup the previous week to see if it works. I’m not tightening all the layout screws yet—I’ll do that after text edits. Otherwise, phew ... doing a layout thrice isn’t great.
  • OGA Art: colored the map of the Emerald City (see above)
  • New kitchen table: thank you IKEA.


***

Week 6 - Oct 8–13
  • OGA Design and Content: finished structure revision. Completed half of local city maps / illustrations.
  • OGA Map: revised cartographic symbol font to use assets from Noto Symbols Sans, making it a free font (our golden age-cartographic), so everyone will be able to use it afterwards as well (see image for current character set, request additional location types in the comments). Updated map. Set up region map for layout test.
  • Travel Journal Design: laid out region + settlement pages
  • Working Version: Orange Pumpkin
  • Korean Alphabet Day - went to the zoo with the kiddo


***

Week 5 - Oct 1–7
  • OGA Design and Content: continued revision of structure and content to final chapter structure (adventures + regions), opening of second adventure, including district generator for town environs (surrounding hexes).
  • VLG Content: revised background traits to be more in line with those in the UVG.
  • Travel Journal Design: layout of interior pages, tests of first pages, prep for test prints to see color and covers.
  • Working Version: Autumn Android
  • Korean Armed Forces Day - Jets and tanks flying by
  • National Foundation Day - Korean holiday celebrating the day when the Grandson of Heaven and Son of a Bear (Dangun) founded the first Korean state of Gojoseon in 2333 BC.


***

Week 4 - Sep 23–30
  • Project: prepared component descriptions for backerkit, reviewed and prepared files for dice production
  • OGA & VLG Design: revised structure to reduce size of appendices (moved twenty character paths from OGA to VLG since they are player-facing content, moved lexicon to OGA and stripped out UVG content to avoid duplication)
  • OGA Design: began revising structure to reduce miscellaneous chapter with content on gods, strange cosmologies, features, so they are located within the lands / regions where they are most pertinent. The goal is to cut page count down to 250 from current ~280.
  • OGA Content: began revising and adapting content to fit new structures, (e.g.  temples of the blue and yellow gods)
  • Working Version: Autumn Android


***

Week 3 - Sep 16—22
  • vacation
  • Chuseok - multi-day Korean mid-autumn festival

***

Week 2 - Sep 9–15
  • vacation

***

Week 1 - Sep 2–8
  • Project: after-campaign review, priorities review
  • OGA content: completed travel tables & first adventure frame

Thank you!! Pledge Manager Timeline, PDFs, UVG Dice, & OGA Discord Link (BACKERS ONLY! 😉)
3 months ago – Fri, Sep 06, 2024 at 09:50:44 AM

Hello!

A big THANK YOU from Luka and the team at Exalted Funeral for a successful campaign! We appreciate you all so much and are really excited you've joined us in making OGA come to life! 


Pledge Manager Surveys and Pre-order Store

We will send out the Pledge Manager Backer Surveys in early October. They will be open for about a month and then orders will be locked and cards charged. 

The Pre-order store will also open at that time so if anyone you know missed out on the campaign they will get a chance to purchase items then!

There will be an update later this month before we send them out with more details, so stay tuned.


PDFs of Previously Released Titles

After the orders are locked and cards are charged in the Pledge Manager then we will send out the PDFs to backers for all of the previously released items like UVG and the SDM zines. 


$11,207.69 away from the last achievement, UVG Dice! Now what?

We were SO close to unlocking those beautiful UVG Eyeburners! We are exploring what it will take to extend this achievement into the Pledge Manager.

Dice are a pretty expensive item to manufacture so if add-on numbers are low then it may not make sense to produce them. We'd like to get an idea of how many backers are interested in purchasing the UVG dice.

We have made a poll to help us make the decision on whether it makes sense to extend this achievement. Please let us know if you are interested in that add-on!


Campaign Updates

Updates will go out once a month with progress updates, pictures of prototypes (and pets), and any pertinent information. 

Thanks again for all of the support!
-Exalted Funeral Team and Luka

FREE Vastlands Guidebook: Bootleg Beta - Early Release PDF is HERE! Two Days Left to Back!
4 months ago – Wed, Aug 28, 2024 at 03:59:57 PM

Hello backers!

Just over two days remain in the campaign 🤯 We have some exciting announcements for this update!


Vastlands Guidebook: Bootleg Beta - FREE PDF!




From Luka:

Good backers! Human frailties have delayed this digital book, but I hope this small file may give you some inkling of the direction of travel of this simple document. I hope you enjoy it!

About the Vastlands Guidebook: Bootleg Beta:

Rules loose, psychedelic metal roleplay in the Vastlands at the edge of time and space.
Welcome, curious explorer, to the Vastlands. To a time beyond the end of time.

Here, in the heart of the world, is the Circle Sea, the pond of panhumanity surrounded by polychrome lands. An overgrown garden of humanity, here neat, there feral, sprawling out of sight of its absentee Builders, safely kept by the inscrutable might of its warden angels, the Phylakes.

There, to the west, the psychedelic Ultraviolet Grasslands stretch beyond the edge of civilization and its faded histories, a deep, vast, mythic steppe littered with the detritus of time and space and memory.

Safe travels at the end of time, beyond the edge of the last safe world. 
 
Characters, rules, equipment, and powers for the Ultraviolet Grasslands and Our Golden Ageand other games in the synthetic dream machine.

For everyone at the table: the player who referees the game and the players who run the characters.

Get the Vastlands Guidebook: Bootleg Beta - Early Release Free PDF here from Exalted Funeral or here on Luka's Patreon!


Final Stretch Goals

We are just over $15,000 from the next Achievement!


And about $65,000 to go for the final one!


Share the campaign and lets unlock these together! 💪


OGA Discord for Backers - Coming Soon

Shortly after the campaign closes, backers only will receive a link to the official OGA Discord channel!


THANK YOU again everyone for all of your support! 

- Exalted Funeral and Luka