The 2nd edition to the cult Survival Horror RPG - Outbreak: Undead is here. Play Yourself as a Character and test your Survival Plan!
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hello Survivors, HAPPY NEW YEAR! We're sorry its taken a little while to get an update. We are deep in production, and as you will see - we've been busy!
We have some news for you as well as some surprises (with more to come as we go), that will show you what we've been working on. Keep in mind, with all of the added bonus content coming from Stretch Goals we might not discuss your most anticipated item in every update, but we'll be sharing a bit as we go along so you'll hear about "that one thing" in no time at all. With that said, we'll get right into all of the juicy news and fun stuff.
When it came to updating the game for 2nd Edition we didn't want to overlook the artistic side of the product, and we've come up with a unique blended approach that helps really bring the books to life. First of all we'll feature a fair bit of traditional art by very talented individuals such as Anthony Jones, Shar Tuiasoa, and our own Christopher De La Rosa. Since we already have a good bit of the artwork in how about we take a look at this amazing piece by Anthony that will be included in the 2nd Edition:
In addition to this more traditional art style, for the 2nd Edition we'll also be making use of some more unique composite material. This is where the photoshoot that we streamed here on the Kickstarter project comes into play, and helps us provide images that add to the sense of realism we have always tried to capture with the system. Here is an example of what we mean exactly:
This is, of course, just a small taste of what you'll be able to expect from the 2nd Edition books. We'll share a bit more between now and the release, but we hope this gets you excited for some of the visuals.
In case you happened to miss the news, all of us at Hunters Entertainment are pleased to announce that we have joined in partnership with Renegade Game Studios (CLANK!, Fuse, Lanterns, Flipships). You can read about it in the official announcement here. As you can imagine we're incredibly excited about this partnership and the journey ahead with these fine folks. This is going to be an incredible year, and Outbreak: Undead.. will be a very big part of that!
This may not mean anything for you backers, but what it does mean - is that Outbreak: Undead will have a much bigger presence in game stores, which means more players and YOU can say you were here first!
Thanks to all of you amazing Survivors for coming along this journey with us!
So, some of you might be thinking "It is 2018, don't we get Free Content Friday now?" and we wanted to come in and touch base with you on how that is all going to work. We took some time internally to decide what the best approach would be for releasing the FCF content, and we came to the conclusion that it will work the best once the Core Rules are released in full form so that you have all the content available to you. This would mean that we start releasing the content in August alongside the release of the Core Rules, and then running that for a year from that time. In the end, this makes it more of a "2018-2019 Free Content Friday" as opposed to just 2018.
Now that we know when we'll start getting FCF content, why don't we talk a little bit about what exactly the content will be.
During First edition OU all of the content released for Free Content Friday was developed in house by our own team, but we always wanted it to be more. Now with 2nd Edition it will be, as we'll be featuring content created not just by our own internal development team but also other 3rd party writers ranging from industry veterans to some of our very own fans.
Why exactly are we taking this approach to the FCF content? Well, for a couple of reasons actually. First of all, keeping development of Outbreak: Undead.. completely insular forever could mean we miss out on a lot of opportunities to make the game that much better despite the research and interviews with professionals we do to inform our development of the game (such as Megan McConnolly of Clinical Role, a group of clinical psychologist who all look at RPG's as teaching tools).
Secondly, it gives us an excuse to do more work with our friends within the industry which is selfishly something that we love. And finally, but not insignificantly, it gives us the ability to provide an opportunity to members of our amazing community who have helped support us as we've grown and matured as a company and brand by letting them get a break into the industry by producing official content for the game.
We've already rounded up a fantastic group of individuals to work on the content you will see over the course of the FCF releases, and it is coming along very well to say the absolute least. In future updates we'll talk a bit about some of the individuals you can expect content from on the project, but for now you'll just have to speculate on that.
We're not done with this update just yet, Survivors - it has been a bit already (ok, a lot), of time since we last chatted, so we wanted this update to be big! With so much content to discuss we need to cram in just a little bit more before we go. As we've previously mentioned we have the Core Books progressing nicely with the content in various stages of editing and layout - with the key bit in this case being the layout side of things. We've done a little bit already, with the release of the Quick Start Guide, regarding showing you the design direction that the 2nd Edition books will take.
Well, we wanted to be able to give you a look at a few of the pages directly out of layout. This first image shows some information that most of you will be pretty familiar with already if you've used any of the existing 2nd Edition early look content like the Starter Kit or Gamemaster's Companion - a basic rundown of "The Round":
This next image is actually something that will likely be a bit new to even those of you who have been following along with development closely. This is a bit of the book covering "The Safehouse" which is something just a bit different from the traditional Stronghold. We're confident this will be a welcome addition to the 2nd Edition ruleset, so take a look:
That should give you a pretty solid idea of what to expect when it comes to how the final book is going to look when you get it in your hands (well, closer to your digital copy really, but that is getting into semantics). We think this does a solid job of capturing that survival journal feeling of the 1st Edition while enhancing the readability and presentation of information.
Just a little bit more! This is the first of a few major surprises we have in store for everyone, but this is the big one for this particular update. We've mentioned in the campaign that we have worked out three "Modes of Play" that scale the level of crunch and realism/simulation a player needs to engage with, and the fact that all of these modes can play at the same table in the same game without problems. Well, that remains the case, but the big news here is that the most rules light version of the game - Arcade Mode - is going to be released completely free of charge in its entirety!
Yes, you read that correctly, we are going to be releasing everything you need to play this version of the game absolutely free. And those who pick up the free version can sit down and play with anyone who has the full version of the game in the form of the Core Rules without a problem.
We hope this will help to make Outbreak: Undead.. more accessible to the newly inducted into RPG gamer, meaning more people playing the game and more opportunities for our community to get to test their survival plans. And of course we're going to be giving this out to all of our backers first, so you get to have a sneak peek and start playing around with all of Arcade Mode before anyone else! This will be coming just a little bit later in a backer only update once we complete the finishing touches on the layout.
That pretty well covers it for this update. As always, we appreciate your attention and patience, and we sincerely hope that all of this excites you just as much as it does us.
Until next time, keep your head on a swivel Survivors!
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
!CONGRATULATIONS!
THANK YOU!
You took the FIRST STEP in preparing for the ultimate Survival Horror Role Playing Experience!
In our 5 weeks together, we managed to unlock EIGHT different stretch goals raising (nearly) 600% of our goal.
Including:
Plus maybe a few other surprises we can't quite yet announce....
As the campaign progresses, we'll be sending updates about the progress of the book – as well as its various stretch goals. I can tell you we've already started progress on both the SPEW-AI as well as FREE CONTENT FRIDAY!
BACKERKIT - Late Pledgers
We'll be putting together the backerkit project for this campaign during the next 2 weeks. Anyone who didn't get a chance to GET IN on the campaign, or wants to change their pledge last minute - will be able to. More on that next update!
Well done Survivors. Take care - Prepare. We'll be in touch soon.
We're in the HOME STRETCH! We've got only half a day left to unlock some PREMIUM STRETCH GOALS and get our SUPPLY CACHE backers the best bang for their buck!
Right now we've got PLAYER MATS unlocked. But at $60k we'll not only unlock the UPGRADE TO ACRYLIC TOKENS, but we'll also include T-SHIRTS in all our SUPPLY CACHE backers as well!
That's an additional $40 ($20 T-Shirt, $20 Tokens) worth of materials at no additional cost!
If we reach $65k - we'll include the SURVIVORS JOURNALS as well, this is a binder that will have card holders (for your reference cards), as well as handy pockets/sleeves for your character sheet and tokens!