January Patron Expectations!

Greetings everyone! I was hoping to get this done earlier, though I suppose it only feels early. School vacation is when us IT guys take apart the internet! January is coming up and with it the start of our increased, changed, and more viable Patron rewards. We have been talking about it for almost a month now, and changed the Patreon page a couple weeks ago. In case you missed that or wanted a little more information of what we are giving you in January, you came to the right place!


Get Stuff Early
This is an easy one, since we have been doing it for months. Become a Patron for $1 or more a month and you get Cracks of the Rift and the Untamed Rant 2 weeks before everyone else. Patrons will have noticed that there was no Cracks chapter this month, and those who are not shouldn't expect one January 1st. December, as I am sure you all agree, is a very busy time for everyone and the Scribe just couldn't get it done. No sense rushing something bad out to you, right? But you still have time to catch up and become a Patron to catch the next chapter on January 15th instead of in February.

The Rant comes out for Patrons on the 1st of the month, so if you want our big end of the year episode you should definitely pledge today. We're going to share our 5 favorite resources, talk about all the games we have played this year, and go over how everything's progressed on our part this year. Of course you can always wait till the 15th to catch that episode too.


Dice Giveaways
January marks the start of our monthly giveaways. To start we will be picking one Patron every month to send a set of dice to. This giveaway is entered by everyone at the $1 level or higher. Right now we don't have many so your chances of winning an extra set of dice is pretty high! The more Patrons we get the better and more frequent those giveaways become.


Session Episodes
Are you interested in hearing full sessions in one episode instead of being broken down into around three? How about getting to hear the full session when everyone else only gets to listen to part one? Well, if you pledge $3 or more monthly, that is exactly one of the special benefits you get. Whenever a new session begins, you the Patrons will get the entire session uploaded to Patreon while everyone else listens to the first part on the apps!


Drafts
I almost forgot to add this! We will also be sharing drafts of the stuff we are working on. This means the Cowboy Cop class, some archetypes, and PDF formats for the home brew stuff. A few projects are in the works now, so i can safely say that January will get you some (5-10?) levels in the Cowboy Cop class with at least 2 (maybe 3?) archetypes!


And The Rest...
Of course everyone who pledges $1 or more gets a few other things. Shout outs here and on Untamed Dice is one of them, because we cannot tell you how much helping us out means. Then you first timers will get a welcome package. This package will currently contain a couple of Notes of the Wandering Alchemist silicone wristbands, but we hope to continue adding to that package. On the list for included thank you items are buttons, patches, and stickers. Become a Patron and help us get those, and have some input on what we should get next. And don't worry, we will work out a plan to get new items to non-new Patrons as they come along!


TL;DR - Thanks for reading the blog and listening to our podcasts. We would love your support and one of the ways is by pledging on Patreon. We even reward you for it!

Things are happening!

This past year, things have been a wild ride between work, classes, projects, this site, and our Podcast. In fact, a year ago we didn't even have a podcast. Nor did we have a Patreon or a logo. The DM's Guild was not yet a thing either. Look how things have changed! I plan on doing a looking back post right before the New Year, so for now let's just take a look at the things that have happened in the last few weeks.

Untamed Dice

Serious effort has gone into bring Untamed Dice back, though it has changed from what it was. In the year since we began the show, we have learned a lot. I, especially, have figured out many things regarding running games for a show and, of course, am still learning. Brave New Worlds was our premier main-stay but, as you know, summer made everything difficult and our group has been unable to get together for that. While I hope we can rectify the BNW situation, we have brought to you Luxarrah. This campaign features the current world BNW was taking place on and the 5th Edition D&D rule set. The group is different, but we have an easier time getting together for that. As a result, it is our new/current weekly series. You can find the first episode here, and the second comes out this Saturday!

In addition, we made sure to get to work on one-shot adventures we have promised. First, this meant getting out the end of Star Wars Edge of the Empire (playlist here). Then we recorded Cat, which will be out soon and accompanied by a review of the game. We put another game in the pipeline before beginning our regular release, and that was TMNT and Other Strangeness. Now, with those one-shot all recorded and done we have the next in line with a D&D 5E Legend of Zelda game. My hope is to record and release 1 one-shot each month alongside Luxarrah, starting in January with Cat. As things progress I'll have a more detailed schedule for that!

Patreon

Part of me always feels bad continuously plugging our own Patreon page, but your support would not only mean the world to us, it would also help us do a lot more and move forward with our idea, plans, and upgrades. We have been working on making the Patreon more about you, our supporters. You can get more details here, but we are focusing on giving all our Patrons as much as we are able. This includes shout outs, early looks at releases, and giveaways. As we get more of you, and thus more support, we will work towards improving the blog and podcast, as well as having more to give to you as thanks!

Publishing Projects

I have been hard at work on a number of projects, but few of them at the moment deal with the DMs Guild. That is a turn from what I had anticipated and planned, but quite ok. Nevertheless, I recently released Spells of Old Volume 3 there with 13 spells from the Libris Mortis. Next will be spells from the Planar Handbook and hopefully an adventure down the line.

There are two other major projects I have been working on that I hope to better share with you in more methods than just the DMs Guild. Portions and previews will be available here and even more complete (and play-test-y) versions to all $3+ Patrons. The first of these projects is the Cowboy Cop class. Inspired by the movies and shows that created the trope, we already have a number of ideas for a special mechanic, as well as three different archetypes to choose from. You should definitely keep your eyes out for more on that soon.

The other major project is one I am working on with the artist who designed our logos. While I cannot yet reveal too much information, I can tell you that a lot will come soon. We have the first steps complete, the first release nearly ready for play test, and a plan formulating for development and release. Because we are getting that done, we hope to have a site and Twitter handle for that project soon to spread the word. As soon as that is a go, I will be sure to link it here at Notes of the Wandering Alchemist.

DM Support Group!!

Finally, I have some great news! For the past few months a group of folks from the D&D community on Twitter have been talking via Slack in a group called the DM Support Group. All of us are DMs of varying strengths, backgrounds, and playing histories. There we discuss mechanics, ideas, resources, and more. As the weeks go on, more and more people join the group and discussions can be quite in depth. Well, this week it just got even better! Thanks to Loraedor, who started the group, we have a new born website. There are already a number of links to members' websites and a growing list of those who will be contributing articles. You can find more about it all right here.

Last D&Donuts Before Rename!

Here it is folks out last D&Donuts before it gets renamed to The Untamed Rant (as voted on by you!). Well, the preview of it anyways. Become a Patron (link to the right) to get the full episodes and more. Sorry for the popping and crackles. Some kind of recording problem for the first half of the episode (aka: preview part) appears, gets worse, and won't go away. Hopefully it doesn't annoy you too much!