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Hello again! Quick recap for the newcomers: My name is Nathan Little and I've been working for darn near 2 years, full time, on a board game called Posthumous. The first year was making the rules-side of the game, balancing and testing...
The second year was to provide full art and make the game as awesome looking as it played. I call this fancy pants art version Posthumous Z. If you're curious why how I could possibly make this take a year, it's because 1) I had to teach myself to draw and 2) It has a lot of things to draw, including 300 unique cards.
and it's almost done. And whoa was it worth it.
This thread's purpose is to keep all the great people here BGG who have given such wonderful advice and encouragement informed as to the progress. Also, I love feedback and welcome comments and suggestions. I have a pretty 'open source' policy so if your curious about anything I'll gladly help as I can.
Again, thank you all for your kindness, attention, and advice. Right now the goal is to have the game done and shipping by November 1st. You can preorder the game through my website at http://www.thisisacow.com/games/posthumousz. Everyone who preorders gets put in the rulebook, probably under a label of "Super Awesome Thanks You Guys Are Super Awesome," and I'm redesigning a special Zombie Dino piece, just for you.
A collection of cards from Posthumous Z
edit: The game is complete now!
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Status as of August 05
Okay: what was all I've been doing?
Playing Pieces
Tokens
you can see the 'old' versions on the left. I'll put up more enlightening pictures of the tokens later.
Cards currently at 257/300
did the 17th (/60)card of the last deck, the Z deck last night. Here are just some of the cards done in the last few days.
Board Tiles
Player Aids
Box Art
Update rulebook.
The biggest chunk of time is and has been the cards. I had to design 10 different types of cards as well as do original artwork for all. But I'm on the last deck, and I work hard and quickly. I can usually get 3 or more cards done a day.
The board is made up of 18 tiles. Some of the locations have special features. The planned redesign will make these special features much clearer. The tiles have 1-3 spaces which all have images of some kind of venue (ie meat locker, dorms, front desk etc) which will need to be drawn, but I've found that things and places aren't hard to draw. You look at some references and draw them. It's nothing compared to the mind racking stuff I've been doing for months making up the cards... drawing things like 'experience' or 'paranoia.'
There are 2 player aids: one for zombies and one for humans. It's just a half sheet that reminds players of the order of play and helps them keep track of their stuff. It's something that needs to be done but it equates time wise to like 3 cards.
Boxart: Yes I know the old box art is bleh. Expect the new boxart to be more of the vein of a hair metal album cover. Something absurd that makes one spontaneously grow a 5 o clock shadow and cock a shotgun.
Rulebook: The rulebook just has to be updated to reference how all the new stuff is gonna look. Plus the thank you page for the pre-order folks.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
On Shipping
Apparently, the minimum service that Paypal will allow for shipping is Priority...
1st Class is less expensive, but doesn't have a tracking number and is slower. But the price difference on international orders is fairly significant (from 40ish to 25ish).
If any of you international folks would prefer to use 1st Class you can email me and I can set it up.
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Nathan
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
August 10th
a few recently done cards
265/300 cards. 35 more to go. Still fiddling with some of the placement of those 'wound cards'
Anyone know of a way to link this thing to the board game entry? On that note... I really should look into making a 'new version' entry for this one.
Right. I was gonna write some rather heartfelt stuff about ... art? Adaptive design to promote creativity and humor? My brain kinda blanked so I'm just gonna go back to coloring my zombie dinosaur.
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Nathan
EDIT: Just realized I accidentally reposted the zombie wall- woops. Meant to take an image of the 'mob' card. Sometimes get a little confused since I try to keep the numbers of similar cards together but I don't always do the cards in perfect order.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
August 11th
269/300
Thought I'd do another update since I accidentally displayed a duplicate, plus I think everyone would like to see a few of these types of cards:
BOSSES
In Posthumous, there a handful of zombie bosses. Here are a few of them.
Personally my favorite both look and how the card works is the True Monster. Probably the most disturbing card I'll do, but I guess one should expect a tad more gore on the Z-cards.
Everyone else seems to prefer the dinosaur. Every time I've asked why they just wave their hands and go "it's a dinosaur!"
Maybe unwarranted, but one of the things I am most proud about with this artwork/card layout is breaking outside of the 'card format.' Most games with cards have text area, border, 'graphic area' etc. The cards in Posthumous 1) in basic layout aren't just rectangles but tangible objects and 2) break the formatting rules. Often the 'not card art' areas of the card become part of the graphic, like on fire or out of nowhere, an event card that has a hand busting through the text area, or screwed up everything where every area except the text is smeared with blood. Maybe I just like smashing perceived paradigms. I can't believe I spelled that right.
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Nathan
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
August 16
Was too tired to do actually write up the update last night so doing it this 'morning.' I'm a night owl so this is morning to me. Night is midnight to 6 AM.
anway: 279/300 cards done. Here's a peak at an assortment of cards.
You know, making all those little side comment scribbles actually starts taking up a good amount of time after the 40th one.
Hope you all enjoy these sneak peaks. Also, if you are excited about this game and have not preordered I strongly encourage you to do so. Few games receive such attention and craftsmanship. The cards alone have several hundred original pieces of artwork. The design was carefully crafted to not only be attractive but functional. Everything was done to create something to enhance the gaming community. So please, support this project and we'll raise the bar.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
August 19th
At this point only 15 more cards to go. Isn't that cool? Actually I've got another one mostly done so it's really like 14 point 5. Hey, I've been doing this for a long time; I have to try and stay optimistic.
If I stay diligent, the cards should be done next week. If psychosis smiles on me, my obsessiveness should accelerate this last 5 percent.
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Nathan
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
August 24th
So at this point I'm at 293/300 cards, or 97.7% or T-7 cards until completion. intending to work for several more hours and get 2 more done, but I we'll be counting that as tomorrow's work as it'll be past midnight.
Despite the ridiculous number of these updates it occurs to me how many cards you're not seeing. I actually had a little discussion with one of my lead play testers about the fact despite playing it so many times there's a decent number of cards he's never even seen. Other play testers have seen them, but no single person (save myself) has probably read/played with every card. No big revelations; just thought that was interesting.
Okay, I had more to say, but I think my brain is a little fried, so I'm gonna take a quick break before I get back to work. Seriously, I just proofed what was here... and it was rambling nonsense.
- Nathan
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Abdul Rahman Ibrahim
Malaysia
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Good luck! You're almost there! The cards look really good 
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Chris Benson
United States
Boulder
Colorado
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
This game looks really intriguing, and I was about to pre-order when I saw the price. What all does the $65+ cost include?
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Keep on truckin! Let's see it!
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
NaughtHere wrote: This game looks really intriguing, and I was about to pre-order when I saw the price. What all does the $65+ cost include?
It has the same stuff as listed on the 'old?' version just now much nicer looking, including:
120 Zombie pieces (5 sets of 15, and 45 'colorless)
+ 5 character pieces and 3 zombie bosses.
300 Cards. And this is the big thing. 300 cards, representing random events, abilities, bad stuff, items, heck they're even used to randomly generate human characters and zombies types. And each card is different, with its own card art.
100+ tokens used to keep track of horde limits, health, noise,'hunger' which is sort of like zombie money, and infections.
18 Place Tiles + start and escape. Each game the town is randomly laid out, 3x6. These tiles end up making a board about the size of a classical board game.
10 player aids. (5 zombie, 5 human).
Now this is just a picture of the 'old' version, but this should give you a pretty good idea of the scale of what's in the box. PLEASE disregard such things as the horrible box art. I got better.
Part of the reason for all the stuff is that the game was made to support a large group of players (up to 10). The rest is for replay ability. In a typical game, I'd say the players go through about a third of the cards. Combined with the random setup, this gives each game tremendous variety, not just in an individual game, but distinctly from each other.
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Chris Benson
United States
Boulder
Colorado
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Awesome. Thanks for the breakdown.
Edit: Now hurry up and finish!
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Frank Branham
United States
Norcross
Georgia
Battle Beyond Space Status: Zev is sending final specs to manufacturing shortly.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
So...wait. You didn't know how to draw, or have not been doing the whole graphic designer thing for awhile?
This is actually quite decent illustration. And possibly a really nice graphic design. Admittedly, I'm not a skilled judge of either. The fact that it is 300 cards is pretty crazy.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
fbranham wrote: So...wait. You didn't know how to draw, or have not been doing the whole graphic designer thing for awhile?
This is actually quite decent illustration. And possibly a really nice graphic design. Admittedly, I'm not a skilled judge of either. The fact that it is 300 cards is pretty crazy.
I knew which end of the pencil left marks. In all seriousness, I was a doodler but not much more. My career in graphic design has pretty much been what I've done with this. But it's taken me the greater portion of a year to get this far...
Fun fact: all the artwork is done as Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG for short. If you aren't quite a big enough nerd to know what that is, Wikipedia it.
September 1st
The cards are done. Hooyah! Pain in the butt, too. I got to the last 4 and then had something that took me out of state and preoccupied me for 4-5 days. Was doing the last 2 today and my bloody computer, trooper that it is, had a memory error where it wasn't saving what I was doing. You can imagine how ashen faced I was when I discovered that. Thankfully, this has only happened about a half dozen times in the history of this project. A few more frenzied hours later job was done.
some of my favs of the last cards. I adore the powerout card; I think I just love the quirkiness of any card where the 'card' becomes the image...
Now on to what's left. The tiles (board) are probably gonna be what I tackle next.
Oh, and if you're reading this right now, thank you. And especial thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment, advise, cheer on, or even simply thumb. Can't make it happen without you guys.
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Nick Hayes
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
A pat on the back and a big thumbs up. Keep it up Nathan!
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
September 6
All right! Been a busy few days, no small part being spent on checking and double checking the cards to make sure there's no new errors. Inglorious, but so necessary.
But! There's more! Been working on the Tiles:
In Posthumous, the human characters are trying to escape to the outskirts of the town. The town itself is made up of 18 tiles. Each tile is a 4.5 inch square, and they're arranged 3 wide and 6 long. Each tile also gets a random event card, which gets triggered when humans move onto the tile.
Each tile has between 1 and 3 spaces, irregularly broken up. The shape of these spaces, and being able to recognize which spaces have special features (like items, or extras to rescue) is very important. So I'm trying a few things out to make it more clear.
Here's a look at the 'old' versus the new.
The tiles are color coded more or less, so the board ends up being very bold looking: sections of red, green, blue, yellow, and purple. The old version, which was just a quick and dirty photo manipulation thing, was done making images dual tone. Dramatic, but having black on the images of the spaces kind of broke up the image when you look from a distance. Also, wasn't so clear which spaces had special features.
The new tiles will still have the color coding, but mundane spaces are a duller hue, while special spaces are rich.
with an event card on it, and one with a bit of perspective
The area reserved for the event card is downplayed so it's less distracting and so the artwork is more visible when it's not there. You can also note that a bit of stretching with the spaces helps the card from confusing where the space is.
This tile was a bit of an overkill because I was working a lot of stuff out... at the end, my more complex cards got up to 400 some objects in the artwork. I got up to 800 or so I think a couple of times. This tile is nearly 3,000 objects.
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Robin Goodall
United Kingdom
Cambridge
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Thisisacow wrote: The area reserved for the event card is downplayed so it's less distracting and so the artwork is more visible when it's not there.
It may be just because it's on screen rather than printed but I didn't even notice the word EVENT at first (disappeared in to the background). I'd say it was "downplayed" a little to much.
Anyway, looking great. If you want another pair of eyes to proofread then let me know.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
firewizard wrote: Thisisacow wrote: The area reserved for the event card is downplayed so it's less distracting and so the artwork is more visible when it's not there. It may be just because it's on screen rather than printed but I didn't even notice the word EVENT at first (disappeared in to the background). I'd say it was "downplayed" a little to much.
Actually, that's downright awesome. Every tile gets an event card. Where it is on the tile isn't actually that important. By more or less having a reserved spot, the spacing can be designed so that the event card doesn't confuse where those spaces lay.
So unlike areas that have extras, or items or some other special rule, you really don't need to see the placer unless you are looking for it. And since it's in the same spot on all 18 tiles (top right corner) it isn't like a rabbit hunt to find them.
Also, these are pretty hefty tiles. 4.5 inches square (11.5 cm) so it's much clearer to scale- and somehow the event highlight is more jarring physically.
But I will make sure, none the less. If the event reserve ends up being too subtle, it's a simple enough matter to make it more obvious.
firewizard wrote: Anyway, looking great. If you want another pair of eyes to proofread then let me know.
Ah, if only. The main thing that could use proofreading are all those cards and I just have no practical way, other than have someone to look at the physical prototypes...
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Robin Goodall
United Kingdom
Cambridge
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Thisisacow wrote: Every tile gets an event card ... And since it's in the same spot on all 18 tiles (top right corner) it isn't like a rabbit hunt to find them.
In that case, yes, you aren't going to miss placing one as you always will.
Thisisacow wrote: firewizard wrote: Anyway, looking great. If you want another pair of eyes to proofread then let me know. Ah, if only. The main thing that could use proofreading are all those cards and I just have no practical way, other than have someone to look at the physical prototypes...
Unfortunately, there's a large expanse of water between us! Seriously, as it's just the text that needs proofreading, wouldn't producing low res (but high enough to read the text) image files for each card work? I'd even sign an NDA if needed.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
firewizard wrote: Thisisacow wrote: Every tile gets an event card ... And since it's in the same spot on all 18 tiles (top right corner) it isn't like a rabbit hunt to find them. In that case, yes, you aren't going to miss placing one as you always will.
I really don't think so. Having it the physical tile and at scale makes a big difference. But I'm going to meet up with some gamers in a few hours so I will make sure. If they are also bothered by how much it's downplayed I'll make it bolder.
firewizard wrote:
Unfortunately, there's a large expanse of water between us! Seriously, as it's just the text that needs proofreading, wouldn't producing low res (but high enough to read the text) image files for each card work? I'd even sign an NDA if needed.
Well, no reason not to take advantage of enthusiasm. Doing low res images probably will be the way to go- if nothing more than simply the file size. Anyone else interested in proofing? If a fair number would like to then the cards could be divided up a bit so no one's looking at several hundred cards.
I wouldn't want you to sign an NDA. Hell, I'd want the opposite. Tell everyone who'll listen; get excited! And I'm not all paranoid about people 'stealing my idea' or whatever. If you see rules, mechanics, or just an idea you'd like to adapt for your own projects- go for it. There's a big difference between inspiration and plagiarism.
So who's interested? FYI if you have issues with motion sickness and the like, several of the decks have text slightly angled. It isn't an issue with the actual cards, as hands and eyes just adjust, but on a screen is a little visually disturbing.
September 10
3 tiles done. In the middle of doing a junk yard now... here's the 3 completed in a row. Now just picture 6 rows and that's the game board. Oh yeah and there's these long, narrow cap tiles for the start and the escape.
Believe it or not, the open road is based off a picture I took about 15 minutes from my house. I am that close to route 666, and yes, even the first 6 has that tilt. Hmm... I think I should put some tire streaks on the road...
Click this image and go to the original if you want to see closer. The image is only 75 dpi,
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Chris Benson
United States
Boulder
Colorado
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
Thisisacow wrote: Well, no reason not to take advantage of enthusiasm. Doing low res images probably will be the way to go- if nothing more than simply the file size. Anyone else interested in proofing?
I'm a writer/editor by trade. I'd like to help.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
NaughtHere wrote: Thisisacow wrote: Well, no reason not to take advantage of enthusiasm. Doing low res images probably will be the way to go- if nothing more than simply the file size. Anyone else interested in proofing?
I'm a writer/editor by trade. I'd like to help.
Awesome! Anyone else?
Oh and as a side note: going to make the event placer bolder. Playing it safe. Grumble grumble grumble grumble...
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
September 15
Okay, tired but wanted to update as soon as I'd finished this stuff: Another 3 tiles done.
Done some fiddling around with some of the filters and texturing for the best results. Gives them a richer look while still being muted.
I've gotten enough tiles done that I can get a real idea of what the 'whole board' is gonna look like. Quite pleased with the results. Never quite sure if something is going to work until actually trying it. Feedback's been excellent too. I'm by no means a master, but I think the results are much better than the simpler options like say: uniform top down views.
Possible Plus: with all the spaces having unique and recognizable graphics, should make it easier to differentiate them when talking... ie "okay, we both spawn on the townhall, you spawn on the stairs I'll spawn on the corridor" or some such.
Also note that the EVENT is bolder. The town hall is going to get a special placer for an extra to make it easier to place them... just not 100% what I'm going to do. Have a few options and mulling it over.
On Proofreading: going to work on converting the cards. Sorry for the delay; needed to finish this set before proceeding to the next thing. Only way to make sure things get done is to zone out and totally focus. Hence the 4am post.
Boy I am too tired to proofread this. I'll just edit it in the morning when my ability to use grammar returns...
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Nathan
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Guido Gloor
Switzerland
Ostermundigen
Bern
The statement below is false.
The statement above is correct.
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Re: Posthumous: Let's Finish it!
4am? It's 10:22 over here 
Anyway, great posts, keep them coming I prefer the bolder Event markers, too, and didn't see them at all in the first version either.
I'd offer to proof read, but since I'm not a native speaker and don't work in text either I'll probably better leave that to the pros
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Posted Fri Aug 6, 2010 2:51 am
