Botanical Bestiary, the Leshy-centric bestiary

Reminder: BackerKit orders lock April 30th
about 2 years ago – Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 08:05:55 AM

Hello - 

Just a quick reminder that BackerKit orders are going to lock April 30th. You can still update your shipping information until we lock addresses later in the summer, but now is a good time to double check billing information and to make final updates to your order!

A more fun update to come early May!

- Matt

Final weeks to pre-order, project milestones, and more art!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 18, 2022 at 10:28:19 AM

Hello!

A quick update this month, as we are rapidly approaching the end of the project and final release of the Bestiary! 

Pre orders close April 30th

If you or a friend want to pre-order the bestiary, the store will remain open for two more weeks. Once it closes the only way to get the Botanical Bestiary will be through our POD stores, which will become available sometime in the Fall. However, the pre-order store is the only place to order the Dandelion Leshy sticker and the Three-Leshy-in-a-Trenchcoat bookmark, and will be a separate printing run than the POD offerings. It also gives more direct support to the project, as the POD sites will be taking a decent percentage of the orders as a distribution fee. If you have already placed pre-orders, BackerKit will process charges when the orders lock, so now is the time to make any adjustments to your order or payment info. You can place your order until April 30th at leshy.backerkit.com

Project Milestone - All art complete!

As of this week Sita has completed all 66 of the leshy illustrations! An amazing impressive effort to produce that many awesome leshy illustrations in only 9 months. This is a major milestone for the project and pushes us well ahead of schedule for publication. We are not adjusting that timeline yet however, as formatting and printing remain as potential hurdles to release. Still, a good cause of celebration! Now we can look forward to the release of the book's cover art...

Speaking of art

That is all for now. As always, thank you for your support in bringing this project to life!

- Matt

Sample pages for a first look!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 06:57:29 AM

Hello!

Our sample pages/playtest of the Bestiary is finally ready for 2e! You can access the PDF by clicking here or by visiting https://bit.ly/LeshyPlayTest. 

The PDF consists of 6 leshy stat blocks (~10% of the book) covering a small range of levels and creature types, ideally to let you easily insert into an ongoing campaign. This is the perfect time to share any feedback you have on the format, balance, creature design, etc. The more input we get from backers the more we can make this book exactly what the backers want! Feel free to leave comments on the campaign, message me on Kickstarter or twitter (@TTRPGHomebrew) or in our discord server.

This is also a great time to share the PDF around and let others know the pre-order store is still open for another month! It will close April 30th, so any friends on the fence should jump in now!

General Updates

We are now up to 95% art completion! That means we currently have 55 creatures completed, 8 in the sketching phase, and only 3 left to start. Completing the art isn't the end though, as formatting is still ongoing, along with creating the cover and getting everything squared away for the printers. We are making great progress though, and are well ahead of our initial timeline.

Add-ons

Samples are in for the stickers, and they look great (just ignore my poor camera skills). The stickers are 135gsm waterproof paper, and completely recyclable.

We also played around with ordering wooden pins, which may be available in the future. 

Finally, the design is finished for the Three-Leshy-in-a-Trenchcoat Bookmark! Samples will be ordered soon, but should be 2x6 inches and adorable.

That is all for now. Thank you again for supporting us and sticking with the campaign. I hope you enjoy the samples, and look forward to hearing from you all!

- Matt

Heritages, Pathbuilder, and more!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 02:18:10 PM

Hello!

A lot has happened in the last month (good and bad), so we have a lot to talk about! 

Timeline

First off, I am bad at math and was calculating our current progress wrong. With the latest batch of illustrations and correcting my mistake, we are now 75% illustrated! This means there are only 17 leshy left to illustrate (several already started) and the book cover. Once the final art is complete, it will be a short turn around to submit to the printers, with PDFs releasing around that time. We are going to keep our original timeline for now, but will adjust up or down once we hear back from the printer about any delays they might be expecting. Digital assets (meaning Foundry/Roll20 packages, not PDFs) will release shortly after physical books ship. Speaking of...

Pathbuilder Partnership

We have partnered with Pathbuilder, one of the most popular character builders for Pathfinder 2e. This will allow users to easily incorporate the leshy heritages unlocked in our stretch goals for their new characters. We also working on a similar arrangement for Wanderer's Guide, and will happily reach out to any other options backers would like to see!

Heritages

We have finalized our list of leshy heritages for the bestiary! These will be written by Linda Zayas-Palmer, who we are beyond thrilled to be working with. Linda wrote the leshy ancestry for Pathfinder 2e (along with a ton of other stuff), so these heritages should be something special. As a note, the art below was generated for the Bestiary, and may not directly translate to the heritage (i.e - the Petrified Leshy may not be playable as a giant rock spider!). These heritages were made possible through a stretch goal, so thank you all for making this happen!

Slight delay to playtest
 Since my last update I had a brief stint of covid, so I am a little behind on getting the playtest together. This should be ready to deploy soon (another week or two), just want to adjust one final creature and possibly a sample heritage to include in the playtest package. Apologies for the delay!

New Art
 

 As always, thank you for support in backing this project. Its been a wonderful process seeing it all come together, and I can't wait to share it with the rest of you!

- Matt

New Year New Leshies!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 12:58:53 AM

Hello all - 

We are back from the holidays and hard at work once again. Continuing our update from December, we are now up to complete art for 36/66 creatures with two more sketched (scroll down for the latest art). As such, we remain on our current timeline for delivering the book to the printers in the early summer. While we do not anticipate any delays, supply chain and shipping issues remain and we will try to keep everyone informed about any delays should they arise. In the event of a delay in printing, digital rewards will be released as they become available. 

Finally, as we near the printing date we will need to lock down order and addresses. To do so, we will be closing the pre-order store on April 30th, 2022. So if you want to add to your order or have any undecided friends, make sure orders get placed soon!

Future Updates

During the next update I will be sharing a limited selection of formatted pages and stat blocks (including a couple of epic level leshies!) that are ready for playtesting. These will be for Pathfinder 2e only, with 5e playtesting coming in March. If there are any leshies you would particularly like to playtest, let me know in the comments. Looking forward to getting some feedback!

Newest Art!

Possibly the cutest leshies yet. As always, you can find more art, work-in-progress images and even vote on potential designs in our discord or Sita's twitter.

Once again thank you for your support in making this project come to life.

- Matt