Behind the Scenes Part 10b: Transparency About Slow Progress
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 07, 2023 at 09:11:42 AM

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you all know what’s going on behind the scenes with Carved in Stone, and let you know about some of the long-term challenges the team and I have faced over the duration of this project.

Alongside this update, I've also written up a deep dive into the design decisions going into how Carved in Stone is being drafted and laid out. Its a more light hearted read! 😅

The need for transparency 

I'm increasingly aware with every passing week just how much farther Carved in Stone has drifted from its original deadline. This book was meant to be printed and out in the world in November 2022. It's now July 2023, and I there's no way to know how fast or slow progress will move in the future.

I deeply value the trust and support provided by the backers of this campaign. My intention is that by revealing the tricky waters we've been navigating, I can maintain your trust that we're working our hardest to deliver this project.

It’s been a rough few months

In a short round up, I (Brian) was pulled away from work in May 2023 by an unexpected family bereavement, and in June 2023 by an unexpected pet death. Other team members have been dealing with chronic illness, the long term ramifications of settling in a new country, and the general ongoing crisis the world seems to be in.

We commissioned artwork for draft spreads back at the start of May, but the artists we've worked with have themselves been delayed.

Everyone I've worked with has desperately needed patience, extended deadlines, and above all, compassion. In short, if you know anyone working in the arts; a writer, an illustrator, a designer, a game maker; check in on them. I don’t know anyone, neither colleague nor friend, who has had a steady 2023 so far.

Spending of the Budget

Summary: The research required for this project drastically outscaled our educated estimates. Combined with an unexpected absence of research funding, we’ve had to exercise caution about what and how we use the budget. This has led to slower progress, delays, and taking on freelance work to shore up the reduced budget.

The original budget for Carved in Stone allotted funding from January 2022 through to November 2022. This included compensation for me to work part time on the project, for the hiring of guest writers, and a fair rate of illustrations for each spread of the final book. There were near-guarantee assurances from partner organisations that we’d have an additional £25,000 in funding by January 2022, to be spent exclusively on research.

Unfortunately, changing circumstances meant we received £5,000 of the promised research funding, and it arrived late in May 2022. It was informally confirmed in September 2022 that the remaining £20,000 was impractical to obtain.

Up until late 2021, I was receiving Universal Credit from the UK government (as it was their only method of supporting Sole Traders through the pandemic). As I am a Sole-Trader, when Carved in Stone was funded, I was automatically removed from Universal Credit for having more than £16,000 in “personal savings”.

For the original budget, my compensation was set well below industry standard for the work I was meant to be doing (£1000 per month, for full time writing, design and project management). However, it was enough to pay my rent and bills. To be able to do this I cleared my schedule. As the first small delays came in, I had no actual savings or other work to draw on. I paid myself my budgeted rate and hoped that this project would ease back into fast-paced work.

By May 2022, it became clear that Carved in Stone wasn’t going to be ready to print for November 2022. I continued to pay myself a half rate until July 2022, after which I stopped paying myself entirely. I haven’t received compensation for my work on Carved in Stone since August 2022, and I won’t until books are printed and I can start selling them.

Knowing that this project was in it for a long haul, I continued to pay Heather for their invaluable research using Carved in Stone’s budget. Our original project plan included research assistants, but without research assistants, Heather has had the herculean task of doing this research solo.

At various points where direct contributions weren’t possible, I’ve tried to develop Carved in Stone’s future. For example, in October and November 2022, Lizy and I outlined a Pictish single player choose-your-own adventure book, titled Seven Arrows. It’s a thread I’m hoping to pick up after Carved in Stone is completed, to continue the exploration of Pictish history.

Throughout the last two years I’ve continued to work with partner organisations, trying various backup plans to ensure we had the funding to finish this project. The project has received some incredibly generous donations, but we’re still far from the original budget this project was planned with.

  To ensure my own financial safety, I’ve continued my work as a publisher, producing recent Kickstarters for One Breath Left and Border Riding.

As of writing this update, Carved in Stone’s budget is adequately full to bring this project to completion, to my own intolerably high standards. I’m proud to be working on this project, and I’m doing my damned hardest to make sure it’s going to look, feel and be everything we hoped it could be.

What does all of this mean for progress on the project?

Summary: I’m wrapping up all other obligations so that I can focus exclusively on Carved in Stone, but that doesn’t guarantee faster progress.

I’m creating pockets of time for me to work full time sprints on Carved in Stone. I’ve tried for too long throughout 2023 to multitask, but this has only diluted my focus and inhibited my ability to write effectively.

Having learned from this, I’ve stopped taking on future work or obligations until Carved in Stone is complete. These are my current obligations:

•  Border Riding. That was a project I took in 2022. The majority of its work was completed by January 2023, it failed to fund on Kickstarter during Zine Quest 5, and it has been laying dormant while artwork was completed for it by a freelancer. As of writing, it’s fully funded. Fulfilment is being handled externally by Peregrine Coast Press, so once it is to print at the end of July it’ll no longer be a task occupying my peripheral time.
•  VAST Guides. This was a project that was funded by Creative Scotland’s Create: Inclusion program. I talked about in updates 2 & 5; in brief, it’s a series of guides to increase awareness of visual impairments, and help self-publishers make their PDFs more screen reader friendly. It was tied to the progress of Carved in Stone, waiting on a point where we would be laying out and designing the book. We passed the submission deadline for the results in December 2022, and Creative Scotland gracefully gave us an extension. Because the completion date of CIS is uncertain, I’ve taken the last few weeks to complete VAST with Yubi. You can see how it's shaping up at vastguides.carrd.co . This week is my final push towards a final draft, which will go to various consultants for review before being shown to Creative Scotland.
•  Reprinting One Breath Left. My initial stock of One Breath Left is entirely sold out, and a reprint could bring in self-sustaining funding. However, the upfront costs are very high. I am exploring my options, and one includes a Kickstarter campaign to preorder a second printing of the game. 
•  Freelance Work. I’m currently working on a significant project. The deadlines and review periods mean that I’m working full time one week on, one week off. This project will continue on until the end of August. All payment from this freelance work is going directly into Carved in Stone's budget. I’m using the “off” weeks to complete VAST, and from then on I plan to work on CIS exclusively.

I have been turning down professional opportunities I really would have liked to take on, which has been incredibly disappointing. I also haven’t had a social life or taken any time off in the last two years, which has taken a huge personal toll on me.

I want to acknowledge that clearing my calendar isn’t a guarantee of an smooth ride. Genuinely, writing about the Picts has been the most self-destructive endeavour I have ever participated in. It has triggered unexpected trauma, and required a radical reframing of how I think about writing. Every. Single. Page. of this book has brought up new, intriguing, exciting and time consuming questions. Questions that we can’t skip past for fear of accidentally creating dangerous misinterpretation into our work.

When I was first pitched this project, its scope was that of an unconventional piece of low-level archaeological outreach to an audience I was familiar with writing and designing for (TTRPG players).

The end result we’re producing is closer to an informal post doctoral thesis (at least in labour and the number of experts consulted). Most of the archaeologists we speak to tell us that something like Carved in Stone hasn’t really been done before; they’re excited for what we’re going to produce, but also don’t envy the task we’ve undertaken. With praise like that, we’re conscious more than ever that we need to do things right, and not rush ahead.

What’s next?

The steps on the roadmap I produced last month still hold true, but I’m not putting a deadline on them. This book will move when it wants to, and I’m going to keep pushing for that moment when I have something exciting to celebrate with you.

I'm happy to celebrate that about half of the writing and layout is complete for our Peer Review 2 draft. 

We'll continue writing, and our next update will be when the Peer Review 2 has been completed, and we're ready to share an unillustrated book with you.

Thank you!

Lastly, thank you for being so patient with this project for the last year and a half. You’ve all been the kindest collection of backers. Your queries and questions and check ins have never felt like a demanding pressure, and that’s really helped maintain my enthusiasm and hope for Carved in Stone throughout its roughest patches.

I truly appreciate your support as a backer, and I hope you can see that the team and I have been working hard to bring Carved in Stone together.

Brian

Behind the Scenes 9: Writing Underway!
about 3 years ago – Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 10:55:53 AM

Hey fellow Pict enthusiasts (if you aren't a Pict enthusiast, you will be soon). I'm not one for waffling so let's get into it.

Where We're At

•  Research. All of the research for Carved in Stone was officially completed in mid February 2023. It was a herculean effort from Heather, and it involved sourcing evidence from across multiple cultures and time periods, piecing together a lot of specific information, and consulting with experts throughout the Pictish field.
•  Peer Review 1. This research was sent to two peer reviewers. The first is Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm, an early medieval expert. The second is Zedeck Siew, a TTRPG creator and (in my opinion) brilliant writer of evocative cultures. In this first round they were provided with all of our internal-facing research summaries, and our (then current) content outline for the whole book. Their feedback, received late February 2023, was overwhelmingly reassuring. Many of their suggestions related to how information could be presented, and those suggestions often aligned with our own plans. Further suggestions showed areas of the book that have since been reinforced with additional research. 
•  Narrative Planning. We used a few weeks to implement the suggestions from our peer review. After that, Lizy and I have been assembling detailed digests for each page. These highlight the building of information within a page, as well as across whole sections. These also include breakdowns of where information would be presented; in text, in illustration, in diagrams, etc. 
•  Layout Drafts. With the skeleton of the book planned, I've been able to develop draft layout spreads. Usually layout is approached with a finished written text in hand, but as we've talked about in previous updates, we wanted to give visuals an equal focus throughout the book. To do this, we need to know how big images will be on a page, how much space that leaves for the remaining text, and so on.  This is also our opportunity to build in visual accessibility, such as developing proto-briefs for the visuals and outlining what information they need to convey (which can then later help refine the order a screen reader would move through the content, and the Alt-Text it would read out for illustrations).
•  Writing. Finally, with all of the book laid out and writing goals established, we're able to start writing draft content of the book. Lizy and I have already worked on experimental spreads earlier this year, exploring how we want to use tone and writing styles. We're feeling confident as we move onto this next stage of development.

What's next?

• Peer Review 2. Lizy and I are going to be working hard the next two months. Our second peer review is slated for the end of April, and we're hoping to provide a final draft in a bare-bones layout, including descriptions of artwork and diagrams. Our aim for this review is to receive direct suggestions about where the text misrepresents the Picts, or could be more evocative or useful to Roleplayers at the table.
• Implementing PR2 Changes. We'll need a week or so to discuss and then make those changes to what will become our final draft.
• Edits. By Mid-May I hope to hand the final draft to an editor, who will be screening the book for spelling, grammar and phrasing inconsistencies. They'll hand back the final text.
• Creating Briefs. During the editing period, I will be turning the descriptions of artwork and diagrams into full briefs for freelance illustrators. We already have a few artists that we'd love to work with, and most likely around early April I'll be posting a call-out for portfolios.  I'll be briefing artists Late May.
• Artwork Deadlines. I'm aiming for drafts to start coming in from Late June, and finals to come in Late July.  Working with so many different people, I anticipate there will be delays due to illness and personal reasons.
• Backer Review. Sometime from Mid-August I'm hoping we'll have a mostly-final book to show all of you. It'll have been a long time coming, and we'll love hear all of your thoughts on it.
• Implementing Backer Changes. Of course, hearing your thoughts may mean we'll want to make additional changes of the book! Our goal here will be to facilitate clarity of wording, and the functionality of the text.
• Digital Accessibility & Printing. Once we've done all of this, we'll be ready to prepare Carved in Stone for printing and fulfilment. Once it's sent to print, we'll also be able to finalise different visual accessibility options, such as proper screen reader formatting, finalised alt-text, and different formats of the book.

Other Important Things

• Special Rewards. We've not forgotten about the higher tiers, and how important their support has been to be able to work on Carved in Stone. 
• Pictish Postcards. These will be easy enough to put together once art is commissioned, and will be fulfilled alongside the books (hopefully) later this year.
• Name Carvers.  We're working to establish a fun and simple way to collect all of this information, and relay it into the book. The exciting thing about Ogham is that it's not an alphabet we can match 1-to-1 to the Romantic alphabet we use today, so part of gathering the names will also include education on how to make it work! We're hoping to start surveys for this in May/June 2023.
• Pin Badges. The design for the pin badge was shown in the very first update. Aside from some tweaking, it's ready to be ordered and fulfilled with the book (hopefully) later this year.
• Troves. Jeff from the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland has sourced a delightful collection of academic texts for all you knowledge-thirsty historians. They're currently safe in the Society's hands, but will be ready for fulfilment with your books (hopefully) later this year.
• Masterclasses. Last year was a bit chaotic for everyone. When I initially started sending out surveys to schedule master classes, I didn't receive any responses for quite a while, and still haven't heard back. Now that we're in the thickest part of the book process, I think it's best to begin trying to re-organise the masterclasses after the Backer Review - sometime in August.

"Hopefully Later This Year"

You may have noticed this phrase pop-up throughout this update. I want Carved in Stone to be finished so badly. This project is terrifically exciting and also overdue. That said, I don't know what further delays the world has planned; we've already seen paper shortages, shipping crises, Brexit floundering, the possibility of Scottish Independence, and goodness knows what else to come. 

At the heart of it, Carved in Stone is organised by me, one person, and worked on solidly by three people (myself, Heather and Lizy). We're working as hard as we can, and on an extremely tight budget. Whatever boulder is in our way next, we'll get around it, but it will take us a bit longer than much larger publishers!

~~~

That's all I have for this update. I'll be back when we hit the next milestone, which I'm hoping is glowing approval from Peer Review 2 and an editor telling me that Carved in Stone is the most beautifully written book they've ever had the pleasure to work on.  (I can dream).

-- Brian. 

Behind the Scenes 8: Happy New Year!
about 3 years ago – Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 02:58:54 AM

Hey everyone!

Happy new year, and happy new Carved in Stone update! This one talks about where we're out with our current progress, a sample of draft work from Section 1, and a big thank you for your patience so far :)

Current Progress

Over December we've had a few consultations with other Pictish specialists and a blacksmith, and those notes have helped us round out some weak spots in our knowledge.

Heather is currently finalising their research, compiling cliff note versions, and preparing to share what we'll be using to write the book with our peer reviewers. These peers will take a few days in February to check through our points, and suggest areas that need additional work. 

From March 2023, Lizy and I aim to be writing the draft text for the whole book, with a second peer review at the end of April to make sure the messages throughout are consistent, fair, and meeting the inclusivity goals we set in the Kickstarter campaign as best we can.

Sneak Peak - Short and Damp

Over the winter, Lizy and I have been experimenting with different narrative styles, so that we'd be ready to hit the ground running in March. 

For Section 1: the Natural World, we've established different scenes around Scotland, providing objective information about the locale so that players and GMs can better imagine and roleplay in them. Here's a draft of what's been written for Lochs:

Lochs

The crossroads of all life in Pictland

Lochs are lakes of freshwater that sustain life both in and around them. Water flows down from the surrounding land, sustaining a rich environment for frogs, ducks, water voles, otters, beavers, and more. Pondweeds, water lilies, and bladderwort (one of the world's most complex carnivorous plants) grow at the surface while fish swim below. Other birds and mammals come to the loch to drink water and eat the local wildlife before moving on to other territory.

The average loch is deep, long, and narrow with steep banks teaming with plants and animals. But every loch has its own characteristics, due to a unique blend of water, soils, surroundings, and inhabitants. For example, a loch with a bed of limestone tends to have a larger fly population, leading to an abundance of trout. A loch fed from a blanket bog may be stained yellow or brown by peat and will be shallower than other lochs.

Lochs form downstream from mountains, in valleys carved either by glaciers or by the lochs’ repeated erosion over thousands of years. Snowmelt and rain water only has to travel a short distance before flowing into a loch, or into the sea. As a result there are no long or very wide rivers in Pictland. Occasionally, rivers will connect from a freshwater loch into a seawater loch.

A sea loch is a long, narrow inlet from the ocean. Although it is similar in shape to the average freshwater loch, the water in a sea loch is brackish and subject to changes in tides.

Microfictions

Alongside these objective introductions, we're also including microfictions. These are different perspectives from inside the locale, sometimes from humans, or animals, objects, or even the land itself. They're designed to be informative, and more personal. Here's a microfiction from the Loch:

Life is Short and Damp for the Water Vole.

He is a tiny rodent, semi-aquatic, covered in fuzzy brown fur, from his paws to his ears to the tip of his tail. He munches grass on the bank of a loch, keenly aware that his lunch could be interrupted at any moment by a larger creature. They need lunch too. Maybe it will be a fox with sharp teeth or an otter with clever paws. Perhaps a fearsome stoat only a little bigger than he. Birds of prey like an owl and marsh harrier always seem to have a talon spare to snatch him up.

The worst, the vole thinks, would be a pike. It’s not right for a fish to eat a land critter.

It’s unfortunate that his inclination is to live so close to the water’s edge. He can burrow into the bank or even weave together a little home of reeds above the water, if he has to. His whole family could fit inside. Maybe, he thinks, this makes him enough of a land creature. He’d rather not be eaten by a fish.

Sometimes he envies the other animals around the loch. The beavers with their iron-stained teeth and heavy bite; they are safe in their dams. The ducks and coots can float and fly; their lives must be so much easier than it is to be a water vole. But a vole’s got to keep on keeping on. He grabs a particularly delicious mouthful of grass before disappearing down the throat of a heron. 

Short and damp.

An Ongoing Thank You

I'll close up this update with another huge thank you. Carved in Stone has been a much bigger beast than any of us initially thought, and while we haven't been able to write updates throughout the year as we first hoped, we have been hard at work. 

We really appreciate your patience with us as we chip away at the book ahead of us!

Brian.

Quick Check In
over 3 years ago – Mon, Nov 14, 2022 at 04:36:58 AM

Hey everyone,

As promised, I’m checking back in after a hiatus in updates. July, August, September and October were incredibly hectic months for everyone on the team. Amongst weddings, moving house and family matters, we’ve all been trying to push Carved in Stone forward.

Research. Over the last few months, Heather has made significant progress with the base research for the book; Sections 0 1, 2 are complete, and 3 is underway. There's an incredible amount of original research happening here, much more than we thought would be needed, and so we're trying to be as thorough as possible. 

For example, Section 1: The Natural World collates different natural scenes from around Scotland for players to explore: bogs, moorlands, lochs, and more. 

Unfortunately, no matter where we've looked we haven't been able to find suitable entry-level resources that summarise what these areas are like. Heather is sifting through 60-page government county analysis documents and in-depth chemical research to create the digests we need for you, the reader.

We hope to have all subjects we’re covering in the book collated for review in Early 2023.

Writing. Lizy and I are following through the research Heather has completed and creating the skeleton of the book’s narrative.

At this point in time, we don’t have anything finished to show off. I’m being extremely conservative with how we use the budget of this project. This means I’m not commissioning artwork or putting flashy resource together without knowing for sure that they will make it into the final book.

Thanks for your patience with me and the team!

Brian x

Behind the Scenes 7: July to October
over 3 years ago – Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 08:31:01 AM

Heya everyone!

This summer is going to be a hectic one for everyone here at team Carved in Stone.  I'll keep it as brief as possible!

Research Progress

So far, we've almost finished researching Section 1: the Natural World, covering different scenes from around Scotland that you will be able to set the stage for your adventures. These include heathlands, bogs, mountainsides, temperate rainforests, coasts and more.

As we've talked about in past updates, research can be very stop and start. It's hard to move linearly through each topics (such as Environments and Places), as they often overlap in unexpected and complex ways (such as excavated pollen samples providing insight into what crops were sown and which plants grew natively in a specific region). This means other sections are a mix of untouched, half-started and nearly-finished. The important thing is we've picked up momentum, and the other sections are flowing smoothly.

We're in the process of solidifying our content creation workflow, and we'll be testing it with some of these locations. That should yield results we can show you in our next update. For now, the documents are a busy list of data and sources, and not very exciting to look at.

VAST Guides

Yubi has been tutoring me quite a bit the past few weeks. I've learned how to navigate with a Screen Reader, we've made accessibility changes to my website, and I've learnt the ins and outs of retroactively fixing PDFs to be more easily accessible, as well as creating companion copies of documents. 

As part of this learning process, Yubi and I agreed that the streams we had planned might not be as smooth as we imagined. Instead we're doing that work offline, and then I'll be making YouTube tutorials of all the tools and processes we use in an RPG context. 

Update Hiatus

Our next update will be coming in November 2022. This month and the next are full of a lot of change for our team members; Jeff has sold his house and is moving his family, I'm moving in with a friend and have to relocate all of my stock (no small feat for an indie publisher), and Lizy is moving to Finland with her partner.  

I've also been taking on freelance work outside of Kickstarter to supplement the Carved in Stone budget. 

On top of heatwaves, personal events and more, there'll be too little to announce on a monthly basis, so we'd rather save it up fragments of progress for something more inspiring!

One Breath Left

Earlier this year, Dungeons on a Dime rebranded to Stout Stoat, as part of my move to fully commit to publishing entry-level games from early-career creators. For ZineQuest 4 I launched One Breath Left, the first of several games I signed earlier this year. OBL is a procedurally generate solo-rpg, where you explore derelict spaceship wrecks in search of a life changing pay out. In the past week its fully funded, and marked as favourite from the Kickstarter team!

It feels a bit weird to promo a new project in an ongoing project's update. However, my landlord doesn't accept "there were delays" when it comes to paying rent, and projects like One Breath Left help keep my lights on while I work on delivering Carved in Stone. You've all been understanding and supportive, which I really appreciate!

Thanks for reading,

Brian.