May Update: Progress Report, The Mythril Canvas Collaboration, and other news
over 1 year ago – Sat, May 06, 2023 at 04:08:38 PM

 Progress Report

Hey, all! Thanks so much for your patience, but we have a progress update for all of you.

We've fine-tuned the mechanics for the book based on on-going playtesting and my personal review. Our proofreaders looked over Arc 6 and we are at about draft 3 on the writing side. All that's left now are both completing illustrations for the book and the its layout. We have a handful of maps and about as many chapter illustrations to complete, but we're hoping we can see them completed by the end of Q3 or the start of Q4. Our highest priorities are those maps and illustrations and doing our best to juggle them with life calling in unexpected ways.

We've completed translating into Korean ancestry/races, classes, divinities, lore info, and we're working on converting monsters now. By the time they're completed, we'll have a solid draft of the book also ready to begin translating.

Pathfinder 2e Playtest Doc

We're almost finished! We'll have the document sent next week through BackerKit to reach everyone's email addresses. Right now, the draft we have is being fixed up and we're making sure to anchor everything properly in layout. The vast difference between 5e and PF2e's layout styles presented some challenges we had to adapt to, hence some delays, but we've gotten a good hang of it. Which bodes well for future projects relating to PF2e coming up.

Goblets and Gays Partnership

You heard it here first, but please do look forward to a narrative play streamed episode of Goblets and Gays based on our one-shot, Dirge for My Bygone Days! The cast will be playing the Pathfinder 2e version that we sent them along with rules and mechanics featured in our upcoming playtest document. Until then, do check them out! They're at their 4th season of their ongoing Blood of Kings campaign! 

The Mithral Canvas

I'm proud to announce in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month a collaboration with our friends at The Mithral Canvas! They're Patreon group helmed by Andrew Kim and Andrew Macaruso and they specialize in launching sets of magical items and occasionally monsters. For this year's AAPI Month, they're putting out an item set titled Treasures of Daehan Minguk which we're pleased to share samples of with all of you!

The Knives of Divine Will are a pair of bronze ritual daggers used in divining ceremonies that enable their wielders to perform a ritual to beseech the beyond for their wisdom. This is just a sample of items that we'll be sending backers in card format with descriptions through BackerKit. Do stay tuned for that and please check out Mithral Canvas' Patreon page for their entire collection of homebrew content!

That's all for now, but if you have any questions or comments, you can send us a message here through Kickstarter, email us at [email protected], or join us in our Discord server! 

April Update: Progress Report
over 1 year ago – Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 02:13:58 PM

April Update

Hey, folks! As we're entering April, I wanted to get this message out early. We're making excellent progress with the book. In fact, we have a full rough draft of it finished, including Arc 6 which was unlocked as a stretch goal! It's pending proofreading and by the end of April, I'm hoping to have the 5e hardcover book in its entirety finally fleshed out. This will put us on schedule to completing it within our promised time frame. 

The start of the year has also been very busy for our team and we've had some members take a leave due to other responsibilities. This shouldn't affect our schedule too much, but I just wanted to be forthcoming about some unexpected challenges. 

We worked a bit more on the one-shot adventure to send it off to Games Unbound so they could run it at PAX East, so there is a bit of a delay with the Pathfinder 2e playtest document. However, this gave us a chance to tighten and proofread material. 

Jeremy Blum (who, as it was announced, is writing for Paizo's upcoming Tian Xia setting books and Seasons of Ghosts!) did an excellent job enhancing what we've already put together through his editing. I think everyone will be very impressed with it.

This Month's To-Do

Aside from proofreading, I'm going to look into seeing if we can't get the stickers and enamel pins at least printed and sent out early. If I can handle the small deliveries myself without it really adding to folks' financial burden, I'd like to give that a try. We'll have more on that in a future update. The art team will continue work on battle maps and some final illustrations for the unlocked bonus arc. Speaking of which!

This is the Yagwang, an undeath-themed fiend whose design was made possible through your continuing support! She's a fiend whose existence represents the decay of all matter and life. In a cacophony, she preaches of peace through oblivion and that life's true value is found only in its end. A sworn adversary of druids, the famished luminescence she emits drains water in it touches. 

We'll continue our hard work going into the next month and hopefully will have more to share then!

March Update: Free 5e One-Shot Release, Pathfinder 2e playtest in progress
over 1 year ago – Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 11:20:20 AM

Good day, everyone!

It's been about a month, so we thought it's time to fill you in on what we've been working on. Aside from the following, the final arc of Undying Corruption is about, say, 2/3 finished in its rough draft form. There has been a long way to go, but we thank you for your patience. We should have a more complete draft of the book in its entirety come April minus progress in the graphics side. Some unexpected delays aside (largely since I hadn't factored in how long preparing the playtest material might take), we're still about on schedule.

Dirge for My Bygone Days

We've completed Dirge for My Bygone Days, a setting-compatible one-shot adventure, for early preview and playtesting. A downloadable copy has been sent to all backers and everyone who preordered from us through BackerKit (just like the 5e playtest). It incorporates a lot of ideas and themes touched on in the playtest document. We'll also be releasing the one-shot for free through drivethrurpg and itch.io, but all backers/preorder customers will receive an early preview. 

I just ran the adventure with some players in our group Discord server and it's been a solid success. Completed it in three hours of game time, so it would take you a solid session to run it in its entirety. 

Please check out our undead-themed adventure using some monsters we've statted up for the book! A Pathfinder 2e version will also be available following the playtest release for that system.

If you get to running it, please let me know how everything went! We're also going to release a set of premade characters in time to help more easily situate players into the world of Danguk. So look forward to them in a coming launch! 

Pathfinder 2e Playtest

Just to keep you in the loop about what's happening, all monsters we've converted have been put organized neatly into the WIP document so far. I wanted to tweak the ancestries and classes a little more while we had the time and they're being looked over by a professional editor and writer, Jeremy Blum/Pixel Grotto, familiar with game development and Pathfinder 2e. We're intent on making sure our product is as strong as it can be when ready for these soft releases, so we've taken a little bit of time to work on them. You can look forward to a release later toward the middle or end of March. 

Until then, definitely keep up with us at Nine Heavens Press on Twitter. We're posting conversions of 5e monsters that we've revealed weekly!

Shipping Update

Quick bit of shipping news, but we're looking to partner with White Squirrel for domestic deliveries in the United States. This changes the shipping fees for the States to around $8.00 or $9.00 USD depending on state to state distances. Regardless, I think these are the best rates we could secure for the moment. We'll begin collecting shipping costs later down the line once we're able to solidify a delivery date. For now, no need to worry, but this has been our progress so far. 

Playtest Doc 1.0 sent! And other news
almost 2 years ago – Wed, Feb 01, 2023 at 09:33:27 AM

Playtest Document Distributed Through BackerKit

Good morning!

We've begun distributing our playtest pdf through BackerKit. We're looking into how to distribute these neatly to those who preordered through BackerKit, but every Kickstarter backer who confirmed their order/locked down their payment will receive a copy. That is 1198 backers with about 116 that haven't answered, so overall, we're in a good place.

The playtest document includes setting info, a primer to Korean culture, cosmology and gods, races/ancestries, subclasses/archetypes, and our Tactician homebrew class. We also have backgrounds, weapons/magic items, and statblocks for monsters. The list isn't comprehensive and will be expanded on by the final draft, but we feel this is sufficient for playtest data so far.

If you have any comments regarding playtest material, some data for how your group did with the content, please hit us up at [email protected]. Your comments will very much help shape any final decisions on mechanics and verbiage. You can also join our Discord server here:

We're still working on the Pathfinder 2e playtest document. They will be sent out by the end of this month with our next update.

Shipping Update

In other news, we're gathering more shipping estimates from our partners:

We've partnered with DiceLatte, a Seoul-based Korean comics and game store to handle distribution. It seems like they've offered in-store pick up, so we will also put that on offer for folks in Korea to save on shipping costs. North American rates are still subject to change as we're still in discussion with a fulfillment company on our end, but we'll have those ready hopefully by the next update.

Media Update

URGE TV uploaded a video showcasing our Roguish Naraka Prosecutor archetype!!

Really grateful for their review on the subclass. Lots of good ideas on how to edit this class, but overall it seems like it's got potential. We're looking to maybe balance the 13th level benefits a little more and buff up the Frightened somehow (since a lot of creatures do end up getting immunity against that).

You can also check out Stellaluna's 3-part series based on an adventure from our book, Paradise in Bloom, here! It was great fun and you get to see a preview of one of my really favorite scenarios.

OGL Matters

With WotC's pledge to leave OGL 1.0 in place, we at Nine Heavens Press are extremely relieved we will be able to go ahead with Undying Corruption as it is. Beyond its impact to the 3PP community at large, we were extremely concerned with the change in dynamics between us and the company whose game's rulesets we're borrowing from. While this is thankfully in the past and we were always committed to fulfilling our promise to release this game in 5e, we're now looking forward to diversify the content we put out by expanding into other games where possible. Already, we've been delving into Pathfinder 2e as part of our stretch goal, but the experience has been overall enjoyable and you can expect to see more from us there.

In particular, when I'm not working on the book, I've been at work on expansions to PF2e classes that we couldn't convert our material into and some new races/ancestries for both editions. They will be released separately from this project. Still, for how things are now, we couldn't be happier with how the OGL matter was settled.

Happy New Year! Progress Report
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 12:29:22 AM

Hey everyone, happy new year! We hope you've all had a wonderful holidays to start off 2023 well and rested.

I've been keeping busy with two big tasks by the next update: 1) making sure the playtest document is ready to go and 2) getting everyone an estimate for shipping. On the first count, the contents of the document have been set up. The additional time enabled us to convert 5e material into Pathfinder 2e, so you will be privy to playtesting content for both systems. We should be able to complete the document before or around the end of the month as mentioned.

Speaking of, we've been posting on Twitter weekly some samples of our converted stat blocks! These are for 5e stat blocks that have already been publicly revealed, so it's only fair we make sure we can catch up with Pathfinder content. Again, we've partnered with James Beck of Eldritch Osiris Games to ensure we get the mechanics just right.

All that's left is making sure everything is together in a neat, visually-appealing layout.

On the second matter, we've been working hard through November and December to contact fulfillment companies to compare and contrast rates. Our priority here is to guarantee our fulfillment partner can deliver excellent service and the best rates for those services. So far, we're looking to sign on with DiceLatte in Korea and GamesQuest for the Europe, the EU, and Australia. The latter is a VAT-licensed company. We're still in communication with North American fulfillment companies, but we do have estimates from GamesQuest on their shipping costs:

I should also note that if the package contains over three items, there will be a 40 cent fee for any additional item. These are initial rates subject to change based on current conversion rates (made from pound to dollars) and the inclusion of any separate rates, but we wanted to show you the data we're looking at so far. Regarding Korea, Dice Latte is a cafe that sells American comics, roleplaying games, and more and they've handled similar fulfillment in the past. We will share their estimates in the following update.

We appreciate your patience through all the deliberation as we, again, make sure we can forge arrangements with lasting partners that can provide both the best service and the ideal rates for those services.

Paradise in Bloom

All that aside, Nine Heavens Press is sponsoring Stellaluna's Twitch channel who will be playing through a level 8 three episode mini-series these coming Fridays! Paradise in Bloom is an adventure from the book which we will see played through by an all Korean cast! Be sure to join us in the coming days as they fix the fallout of a dragon god's demise!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact [email protected], comment or message me on Kickstarter, or reach us at our Discord server: