Expand Root with rats, badgers, and a host of hirelings.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
New Hirelings, Landmarks, and Root is back in stock!
about 3 years ago
– Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 02:14:14 AM
Hello everyone,
I hope this update finds you well. We have a lot of fun stuff to share with you all.
First, we've released our post-Kickstarter update to the hirelings! Over the past several weeks, Nick has been hard at work sharpening the hireling system. We're all really happy with how it has turned out, and to celebrate their competition, we've decided to release all 13 hirelings!
If you'd like to play with the hirelings, we have files for both traditional print-and-play or digital objects for use in Tabletop Simulator. You can find everything you need here.
If you'd like to read more about the development process and some of the reasoning behind the changes we've been working on, I posted an article over on Board Game Geek. The short version is that Nick has done a fantastic job deepening the hireling system. The design has also been streamlined considerably and offers players even more opportunities to use the hirelings in interesting ways.
We’re also happy to share the landmarks. They introduce an easy way to change up the dynamic of any map and provide rules for using the ferry and tower on other maps. Be aware, all the rules for the landmarks are currently contained within the TTS file. We'll be building a physical PNP later as we continue to develop the advanced setup and get them into layout.
Root Base Game: In Stock for North America!
For backers in North America who also wanted to purchase the Root base game, we're happy to report that it is back in stock and ready to ship! Our warehouse is diligently sending out all the pre-orders and preparing to send inventory into distribution soon. Order yours here or contact your FLGS on when they can expect their restock
Backerkit Questions?
If you have any questions regarding filling your survey, please make sure you review update #16. At this point, if you have not yet received your Backerkit survey email, please reach out to us at [email protected] and we can manually provide this to you.
And of course you are welcome to email support with any other questions you might have.
Second Print-and-Play for Factions
about 3 years ago
– Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 02:36:34 AM
Hey, everyone! Josh here, editor and developer at Leder Games. First things first—we’ve just released new PNP and TTS files for the Lord of the Hundreds and the Keepers in Iron. You’ll find them here. (If you have the old TTS file for the Lord of the Hundreds, you do not need to update anything. We have updated the board and mood cards.) For those of you hankering for an update to the hirelings, that's coming! We think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how the hirelings have evolved and how the new hiring system works.
The Lord of the Hundreds has remained largely stable over the months, receiving some minor but important changes to their mood/item pairings and Looters ability. (It now works on tokens, along with some other tweaks!) We've also added some beautiful new art from Kyle! As with the previous print-and-play, though, nothing here should be considered final.
Feeling Wrathful today.
For the Keepers in Iron, a few weeks after we released the first PNP for them, Cole playtested the latest version to review how it was going. Afterwards, he (digitally) pulled me aside and said, “This is good. But you have the time for big changes, and I want to give you the permission to try new things out.” Since I was also still dissatisfied with some parts of the design, I spent the next few weeks trying out one wild idea after another. This tried some people’s patience, but the result is well worth it. So many thanks to the creative team and our internal playtesters for their effort and wise suggestions—I couldn’t have done this without all of you. Let’s talk about what’s new.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Keepers is their new action system. Instead of having four actions that can be improved and added to with their missions, they have an action card tableau called their Retinue. The Keepers are a traveling chivalric order, and it takes lots of support to keep a bunch of knights well supplied and organized, and your retainers—the cards in your Retinue—keep you going.
On its face, the Retinue works much like the Eyrie’s Decree—you may take one action per retainer card, going from left to right through the columns. But don’t be fooled—the two factions play nothing alike! When you play it, you’ll see. Here are a few of the reasons why we revamped this system:
Their actions were too reversible and difficult to track. Basically, you could often get far into your turn and then rewind a lot of steps. This ability to rewind tends to slow play down, since it promotes analysis paralysis, especially when using the Move & Battle mission.
Their faction board was too cluttered. Here’s an interesting fact about the old Badgers: they were tied for the second fewest rules of all the factions. This may be a surprise, since their board was so dense. This happened for a few reasons: there were lots of new action types (Encamp/Decamp, Delve, Recover, Equip, Rescue, etc.), the Recover action was a huge text blob, and the missions required lots of clarifications and space for the markers.
The missions were hard to balance and felt tacked on. People chose the Move & Battle mission about three-fourths of the time. It was always good to have, even if you didn’t use it that much on a specific turn, since it let you respond to changes in the map state, while the Craft and Escort missions were more situational and made your play less flexible. And unfortunately, there just weren’t enough degrees of design freedom to fix this problem in the current system.
Planning and telegraphing remain key parts of the Keepers’ identity, but these elements are now built directly into their Retinue, rather than tacked on with missions. It gives them the flexibility they need to police other factions when needed. In fact, delving for relics now requires battling if there’s someone around to fight—the Badgers are now much feistier.
The second major change is their newDelve and Recover actions. They still delve relics out of forests and then recover them at waystations, but the Recover roll is gone since it took too long and sometimes produced brutal losses you couldn’t avoid. Now you’re actually guaranteed to recover relics that you want, but there’s still plenty of drama and strategy. Here’s how it all works:
Delving. When you delve a relic out of the forest, you flip it over to reveal its value—the four relics of a specific type have values of 1, 2, 3, and 3. If you rule at least that many clearings adjacent to the forest you delved the relic from, great! If you don’t, you must discard the retainer you used for the Delve action. You get the relic in either case; the flip just tells you whether your retainer died a glorious death on their mission.
Recovering. Recovering still happens at waystations, but the waystations are now tied to a specific relic type—so you are only able to recover tablets at tablet waystations, for example. When you recover, you can take any number of relics in a single clearing with matching waystations. (So if you have some tablets and figures in a clearing with a tablet waystation and figure waystation, you might be able to recover all of them!) However, each time you take a relic, you check whether you rule at least as many clearings matching the clearing’s suit as the relic’s value. (This is the same check as the old Recover roll.) If you don’t, you stop your Recover action and discard the retainer you used to take the action. Notably, you still take the relic if its value is too high! You just lose the retainer and can’t recover any more relics with that action.
The third major change is their special abilities. Their Armored ability is now called Devout Knights and it works only when you have a relic with your warriors, inspiring them to fight zealously in their righteous quest. And their Cumbersome ability is no more, so they can move any number of warriors, but they now have a step in their turn called Live Off the Land—in Evening, you must remove one Keeper warrior from each clearing that has four or more. You’re a traveling order just returning to the Woodland, with little infrastructure, so you’ll need to forage and requisition what you can to survive!
Technically this is art for the Keeper hirelings, but it's so good that I want to show it here.
There’s plenty of other stuff to explore, but I’ll leave it there. Overall, their board is cleaner, their theming is sharper, they’re more interactive, their turn is easier to track, they’re easier to learn and understand, and they use fewer components! Pretty good, all around. At this point, we can confidently say that their design is solid and all that remains are development questions—tuning numbers, tweaking setup, and so on.
As always, if you have any issues, please contact [email protected]. Enjoy!
Pledge Manager Invites, Smoke Test, and FAQs
about 3 years ago
– Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 12:10:18 AM
Hi all!
Please read the following on what the next steps are now that the Kickstarter funding campaign has ended. We will cover information on how to submit your order for your pledge, use the pledge manager system, and address any other FAQs regarding the campaign.
What’s Next?
The next step for backers is to wait for your Backerkit email invites to gain access to your account. You will have from now until the lockdown date to finalize any details pertaining to your order.
What is Backerkit and Why Does It Matter?
Backerkit is the name of the platform we will be utilizing to manage your pledge information. From Backerkit, you will be able to do the following:
Review your order information
Manage your shipping address
Add additional items to your order
Pay for shipping and/or add-ons
Please note that outstanding balances will not be charged until the order lockdown date (Current estimate: Sept 2021).
The Smoke Test and Survey Emails
Today, we will be starting a "smoke test", where 5% of backers from our campaign will receive their Backerkit survey invites early. After allowing 48-72 hours to address any issues backers in the smoke test might come across, we will send email invites to the rest of the campaign as early as Wednesday.
Backers who are part of the smoke test will receive their survey invite within the next few hours. Once all surveys have been mailed, it may take a day or two before you receive it in your inbox.
Please remember to check your spam folders.
FAQs
If I’m not in the smoke test, when can I expect my survey email?
We expect all backers to receive their invites by Wednesday April 7th, at the earliest. At the latest, everyone should have their emails before the end of next week. If you still have not seen any sign of your survey after April 16th, please email [email protected]. Please remember to check spam folders.
When will you charge for shipping and/or add-ons?
We are currently estimating to charge credit cards for shipping costs and any add-ons in Sept 2021. The exact date will be specified at least two weeks ahead of time in an official Kickstarter update.
When will surveys be locked down? What does it mean?
When surveys are locked down, you will be prevented from editing the items in your order survey. The current lock down date is set for Sept 2021. The exact date will be specified at least two weeks ahead of time in an official Kickstarter update.
When is the last day I can change my shipping address?
We will send a 48 hour final address reminder roughly 1-2 months before we plan on starting fulfillment. This is so that we can forward addresses and order information to our shippers for early preparation.
Where are my Kickstarter extra items? Will they show in the cart?
Your Kickstarter extra items will not be listed specifically in your cart. Instead, they will be automatically included with any product with the “Kickstarter Edition” name in the title. To reiterate the extras that come with each product, please refer to below:
Root: The Marauder Expansion (Kickstarter Edition) - Kickstarter editions automatically include the free Riverfolk Hireling Pack and Landmarks Pack
[Name not final] “More Hirelings Box” (Kickstarter Edition) - Kickstarter editions automatically include three additional hirelings
Kickstarter edition contents will also be reiterated in product descriptions.
How can I pledge for multiple copies?
In order to pledge for multiple products, you can select the “Add to Cart” button on your desired product to add it to your cart. Any items added that are not included in your pledge level will be listed under “add-ons”.
How many copies can I pledge for?
Each backer is limited to a total of 6 copies of each product to a single address.
Will shipping cost increase if I add extra products?
Yes. Shipping costs may increase and will automatically recalculate shipping in your cart based on your order contents before checkout. To review our base shipping costs again, you can refer to this link from our Kickstarter page.
Will I be able to switch pledge levels?
Yes! When you receive your survey, before accessing your pledge, there is a “switch your pledge level” option below the “Get Started!” button. From there, you’ll be able to upgrade or downgrade your pledge level between any of the different Marauder pledges.
I'm a $1 backer. Why is it showing a shipping cost if I'm not getting anything?
Due to how we've set up surveys, all pledge levels will show a base shipping rate, even if you have no items in your pledge.
Please note that surveys are not mandatory to submit and can be left unanswered. If you receive survey completion reminders and would like to stop receiving these notifications, you will have the ability to unsubscribe from them at the bottom of the email itself. Otherwise, feel free to contact us at [email protected] to manually close your survey for you.
When will we see a sample photo for the Marquise plush?
We’re still working out some details with the manufacturer before we can show the plush. Once we have our sample in hand, we’ll update our image in Backerkit and post photos in a new Kickstarter update. This will be shared well before our survey lockdown date.
Why are there no other Root add-ons?
We’re unfortunately not combining shipping on any of our previous Root products with this campaign to keep logistics as streamlined as possible.
If you are looking for any of our existing Root products, you can visit our webstore here where we offer shipping to many of the same regions as our Kickstarter. Most of our Root products are in hand and ready to ship already and we expect a restock on the Root base game in North America over the next few weeks.
When do you plan to ship?
Our current estimate is to ship pledges in January 2022. We’ll provide updates via Kickstarter updates if there is any change to this timeline.
How will I get the EmigreEyrie skin code for the Root Digital Game?
We will be issuing codes to all backers (including late pledges) at a later date. Codes will be emailed through Backerkit directly to you. A small Kickstarter update on when to expect these codes will be posted when we have a firm date on the release.
Retailers
If you are a retailer, please contact [email protected] for any questions and for ordering information. Please do not message our support email since we are currently backlogged in our general support inbox. Our dedicated sales manager is available to you and will generally respond within 3-5 business days.
Questions or other Support Help?
Please email us at [email protected] for any questions or assistance. Please do not use the Kickstarter messaging system to contact us.
We're unfortunately backlogged due an enormous amount of messages from our ongoing fulfillment for Oath as well as a large general influx of inquiries so please be patient during this time and we'll help you as soon as we can.
Thanks!
Leder Games
A big round of thanks and what 2 million dollars?
about 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 02:29:36 AM
I started writing this last night but I have to interrupt my own writing! 2 million! You’re all amazing! Thank you! Ahem.
I started this post writing about how much I loved chess variants as a child. This led to a lifelong love of expansions and variants. I decided to cut it as this is going to be long enough and you all don’t need to hear an old man rambling.
It has been a long year for all of us. Let’s not dwell on it here, but I am glad you are here with us. The kickstarter for us was a chance to reconnect with our audience, to celebrate the joy Root has brought to us, and, frankly, to just party for a bit. Along the way, we have streamed several games, had an art show, and had the opportunity to listen to you all and talk about the state and future of Root. We now have a new crowdfunding record for our company. And, while the campaign was a lot of work, it has charged up everyone on staff too.
Many of you know that Leder Games works a little differently than other game studios. We try to enfranchise everyone on staff and build a creative enterprise that we can all be proud of. The success we’ve enjoyed this far has shown all of us that it is possible to run a game studio in this way. This campaign is a continuing affirmation of that model. But it’s more too.
Over the past year, we all had to learn new ways to work. Countless times, the staff of Leder Games have not only risen to the occasion, but they have also exemplified the work initiative and ethic to have earned my absolute trust. The company is changing and growing and becoming stronger in every way, allowing me the space to push my own work and continue to focus on the future of the company. In the midst of a pandemic, on top of focusing on finishing work on our upcoming game titles, everyone at Leder Games has persevered and adapted in such a way that makes me proud. I thank them all from the depths of my being.
At this time, I really want to remind the audience what everyone here in the studio helps contribute. The creative team has 4 full-time people in it that contribute to design and development. The rest of the staff is here and present, playing the games through the development process. The majority of the staff can sit down at any time and play Vast, Root, or Oath without hesitation and remotely when we are not all physically in the office. While Cole and myself have been able to work forward, Nick was able to finish an incredible expansion to Fort and is now working on another upcoming game. I’d like to thank everyone again for their help bringing this project together.
Brooke - Recently stepped on board coordinating our marketing efforts with myself, Cole, and Caryl. Multiple times during the project I would say we need X done and she would say X is already being handled! Thanks Brooke!
Caryl - Been with me since the beginning. She has taken over running the business of marketing and sales with style to burn. Caryl has been handling all those important Kickstarter messages and coordinating the rest of the operations side. Thanks Caryl!
Claire - Just started with us in customer success! If you got an email from support during the campaign it probably is from her. Thanks Claire!
Clay - Clay, our sales staff, has coordinated all of the retailer orders and inquiries and has done a tremendous job handling the amount of incoming orders and messages throughout the campaign. Thanks Clay!
Cole - Cole, thank you for making Root. And thank you for your work on this project, designing the hirelings and advanced setup. Cole has also been leading development on the factions as well. And all those comments he answered! Root is Cole’s baby, and we are all proud of the baby. Thanks Cole!
Josh - Has been my right hand while developing the factions. He first moved them from my notes and pulled them together into the PDFs you see today. Now he is coordinating playtest feedback with our community. In addition after having a brainstorm about scoring he has done a lot of design on the Badgers as well as the new Law of Root. Thanks Josh!
Kyle - Kyle has brought warmth and humor to the entire game. He helped us settle on Rats and Badgers as the species I was working on. Thanks Kyle!
Marshall - At the beginning of every project, and even as we add the little things that make a campaign wonderful, Marshall is there pricing it while keeping things under control. In addition to answering comments, he was coordinating many things moving across the ocean at the same time. Thanks Marshall!
Nick - When I set out to design an AI to go rogue I thought it would be cutting out components, answering phones, and delivering confusing bouquets of flowers to my enemies. Little did I know he would be building content for the hirelings and the entire Landmark system while delivering graphic design. Also while working on another studio game. Thanks Nick!
Pati - Thanks for building the beautiful page for us! She also did the marketing graphics and that quality video for the fan art celebration! Thanks Pati!
Ted (from Accounting) - You saw him on the 4 player stream of Root. Ted is proof that we all know the games well. I have been happy to have his steady hand here managing the money. Thanks Ted!
Most of all I want to thank you all for supporting our dreams and vision. The money you give us helps you get a cool game but to us, it means feeding our children, buying homes, and creating prosperity for our families. I love you all and I thank you for your faith in our process.
If only everyday could be the last day of a Kickstarter.
We are going to take a few days off to relax with our families. If you have any concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected] and we will get back to you when we can.
Thank you,
Thank you,
Thank you,
Stay safe and we look forward to bringing you Root: The Marauder Expansion.
Patrick Leder
Leder Games
Root Fan Festival 2021 | Recap!
about 3 years ago
– Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 11:14:27 PM
Patrick, Kyle and Cole had a delightful time during our livestream yesterday, celebrating Root and featuring a few of our favorite entries to the 60-Second Root and Root Fan Art contests. We were blown away by the creativity and love packed into every project! Here are links to some of our favorites:
Music for the stream was provided by Drew Conley. Make sure to check out his Soundcloud for more game-themed compositions!
You can watch the full Fan Festival recording on our Twitch channel for the next 13 days. A hearty thank you to everyone who submitted an entry, and who joined us in chat yesterday! It was a wonderful way to kick off the weekend.
Other Questions about the Kickstarter?
If you need assistance, please email us at [email protected] and we'll help you out! Please refrain from using the Kickstarter messaging system for questions or assistance.
