Schedule updates! Preserving quality, happiness, and community. (Patreon)

Hey heroes! I have several Saddlebag-wide announcements!

The book's Kickstarter has brought up some weaknesses in my current schedule. I'm so, so grateful to be in the position that I am today because of people like you, and I want to be able to continue doing this for a very long time. As a result, I need to take some minor precautions to make sure that's feasible!

What these changes look like for me.

These changes will let me spend more time on item creation and invest energy and heart into larger, occasional releases like the Festerwood and Everglacier. Since the start of year 2 of the Saddlebag, my schedule hasn't allowed me to put out more content like this, and it's one of my favorite things to do when non-item creativity strikes. These releases can include settings, subclasses, and even unique character sheet page designs, and will further build out the lore inspired by and set up by items within the Saddlebag.

In the end, this change in schedule will produce content that will be more fun for everyone.

Slight Schedule Changes.

(Don't worry: it's still 5 items a week!)

There are two things that I do each week that are disproportionally time consuming and/or stressful to their level of community interest. As a result:

1 ) Weekly NPCs are ending. They'll be made when the occasion calls for it. Look for them in setting and subclass releases!

2 ) Weekly Workshop Streams are ending. The weekly polls are not changing, though! I will be moving to occasional free streams on Twitch, instead, to interact more with the community in a less routine and more casual format.

I want to be clear on why these changes are happening:

NPCs are cool in concept, but after nearly 6 months of making them, the time it takes me to finish one hasn't changed that much. I've gotten markedly better, which is always the goal, but the burden it places on my weekly schedule hasn't been proportional to the enjoyment they bring the community. I love hearing whenever these NPCs get used, but it's become clear to me that they're simply not a great use of my time right now.

I also like streaming! But I also need to have some more fluidity with my evening schedules. Dani is an incredibly supportive partner, and I want to be able to be a good one for her in return. Having the scheduled Monday night streams are fun, and I love spending time with you (!), but it puts stress on the quality time I get to spend with her each week given our differing schedules. The move to a more open, free streaming schedule will bring in more people to enjoy the content and get to know me and the rest of the community better, and in the end, I think that's the better goal.

Again, these small changes ensure that I can still have fun bringing you quality content each week, while opening me up to making more unique surprise releases.

Saturday Polls & Renowned Ideas!

If you aren't on the Discord server, you probably aren't familiar with the weekly votes using $5+ hero-suggested content. The process for voting on these items has been handled on Discord for a few months already, but we're making the switch to it being here on Patreon instead. This means that every Saturday morning, you'll have several community-suggested items you can vote for to be made into an official item over the coming week. The top two items will be made following the usual schedule, going through the subreddit first, before appearing here and everywhere else following the community's review.

Given this new shift in schedule, I'm consolidating all polls to take place on Saturday. This means that the Sunday Elite Hero polls will now be posted on Saturday instead, and the follow-up workshop poll will be posted on Sunday.

This means that the new weekend post schedule looks like this:

Saturday:

• Free Item Poll: choose what item's art and cards should be free
• Renowned Ideas: what items from the community should be made this week?
• Elite Workshop: what kind of item should we make?

Sunday:

• Free item poll results
• Elite Workshop: Let's make a <direction> item!

Renowned Ideas polls end Sunday evening, whereas the Free item polls and Elite Workshop polls take place over the course of one day.

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That's a lot of information! I'm confident that these changes will help everyone in the community flourish, stay engaged, and have more fun with each other and the content that's created.

You are all my heroes, and I'm so grateful for you being here! Keep on adventuring!

-g