Happy new year and a January update!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Jan 08, 2023 at 10:23:43 PM

Happy new year from The Gallant Goblin and all our dragon sleigher kobolds! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season. 

Shipping Updates

We're all eagerly awaiting word that the kobolds have landed on their respective shores. At present though, the cargo containers holding them are either still at sea or at port waiting to be unloaded and taken through customs.

The tracking numbers our manufacturer gave us will start updating for us once they've left their respective ports to begin their trips to the distribution centers. We aren't able to track the ships themselves. Once the boxes go through customs, they're delivered to the local carrier and our tracking numbers will begin working.  We will let you know when that occurs!

In the US, the carrier is UPS. In the UK, it's DPD. In Australia, it's Austway Express.

In theory, the US shipment should arrive first as it had an estimated sea time of 18-20 days. UK was 45 days and Australia was 25-35 days. All the shipments left China the week of Nov. 28. That does mean the US shipment is overdue, but our understanding is things are very unpredictable at the end of the year due to Christmas and the holidays, so we're not yet at a point where we should start worrying.

And again, as a reminder, the UK fulfillment center covers UK and Europe. Australia covers Australia and New Zealand. The US covers all the rest of the world.

We know how eager you are to receive your cuddly kobolds! We are hoping to bring a Hero Plush website online this coming week at the heroplush.com URL (it currently redirects to BackerKit). When it's up, the home page will have a tracker for all 3 regions showing the latest information we have about them, with the following statuses:

• At sea
• Arrived at port
• Arrived at warehouse
• Shipping to backers

What we are waiting for are the plushies and the accessory kits. Classic Rory, sticker sheets, adoption certificates, pins, and coins have all reached the three fulfillment centers and they're just waiting for the plushies to begin shipping everything in one box.

Digital Content Update

Some of you may have heard that Wizards of the Coast is considering updating the Open Gaming License that governs third party products using the 5e rule set. If you haven't, this article summarizes what is known so far.

What that means for us is that we will be adjusting the verbiage of what we had promised to be 5e-compatible supplements. There should be no functional difference to you in terms of their usability. Copyright law states that Wizards of the Coast cannot claim any game mechanics, only their specific implementation of it. That means our text may say "a 30-minute break" instead of "a short rest" or "the result of the roll plus any relevant modifiers must exceed a 15" instead of "DC 15." In short, it should be fully understandable, but it may not be the terms you're used to. Should the OGL situation settle down in the next couple of months, we can reissue the supplements with the OGL wording, but if it does not, that is going to be our workaround for now.

Painting Contest!

While you're waiting for your kobold friends to arrive, we have a painting contest running until the end of the month! If you enjoy Steamforged Games' Epic Encounters boxes as much as we do, this is a great excuse to sit down and paint some of the minis in them because this is our Epic Encounters Painting Contest. Top painting prize winners get their newest double box set of Island of the Crab Archon and Cove of the Dragon Turtle while top theme prizes (this is for folks who may not feel confident about their painting skill but can exercise their creativity in other ways, see the rules for details!) can get resin prints of the mini sets from this Kickstarter! 

Check it out at: https://www.gallantgoblin.com/painting-contests/2022-q4-epic-encounters/

Thank you again for all your patience and support so far, we really hope to start getting your kobolds to your door this month!

Grady & Theo (The Gallant Goblin)

Mini-update: Locking Addresses Saturday Dec. 10
over 1 year ago – Wed, Dec 07, 2022 at 11:07:15 AM

Locking Addresses in BackerKit

In order to make sure our fulfillment partners are ready to ship out your orders as soon as all the components arrive from our manufacturers, they are asking we provide the final backer list to them now.

As a result, we are locking the addresses of all completed BackerKit surveys on Saturday December 10, 2022.

If you have moved since you filled out the survey, please take this opportunity to update your address. You will also receive a 48 hour notice from BackerKit on Dec. 8 with a link to your survey.

After Dec. 10, if you still need to update your address, please email us at [email protected] or [email protected]

Retailer Tier Surveys

If you are a retailer who has not yet completed your survey, we encourage you to complete your survey now. Retailers need to complete your surveys by Dec. 15 to be included in the first wave of shipping. We will send out an email to your email address on file if your survey has not yet been completed on BackerKit.

Outstanding Surveys in BackerKit

For all other backers, please check your survey to see if you 1) have not completed the survey or 2) your payment information errored out. We will not be able to fulfill your Kickstarter pledge unless you have filled out your survey and paid for shipping.

Thank you very much for all your support and patience. We are in the home stretch now and all the plushies on ships to their regional distribution centers. We did receive some questions about which fulfillment center is handling your order. If you are in an EU or European country, you will get your physical products from the UK fulfillment center. If you are in Australia or New Zealand, our partner in Australia will ship your products. We are shipping from the US for all other countries.

As promised in the campaign, you should not need to pay any customs, VAT, or other additional costs to receive your package. If you do get prompted to do so, for some reason, please email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. We will either work with the shipper to fix the issue or refund you the cost of the payment.

Please have a safe and joyful end of the year!

Theo & Grady @ The Gallant Goblin

December Update!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 10:38:30 PM

Here's the latest from Goblin HQ!  All the plushies and accessories have been produced and have been shipped from the manufacturer.  They're all currently on cargo ships headed to their various fulfillment destinations.  The kobolds have been given lots of food and toys so they don't try to hijack the ships.   We learned that lesson the hard way!

Unfortunately, the shipping timelines we've been sent indicate that we are certain to miss December fulfillment everywhere except the United States, and the US may also miss.  Shipping, as you may have heard, has gotten unpredictable, even with compliant kobolds.

Here is what we know:

Status of Physical Merchandise

We have three fulfillment centers:

1) GamesQuest in the United Kingdom

2) RPG Mini Hunter in Australia

3) Ox Eye Media (through Nord Games) in the United States

All the pins and coins have arrived. The stickers sheets, adoption certificates, and classic Rorys are with us and being prepared to be shipped out this week. They should arrive well ahead of the other plushies.

So that leaves the plushies themselves (all seven plushies plus four accessory kits and the pseudodragon). While our manufacturer originally targeted Oct. 31 for completion of manufacturing, they got delayed by COVID lockdowns in China. The plushies were received by the freight company November 22 but we didn't get confirmation of shipping until Nov. 27, which was also when we got confirmation of delivery times.

The estimate for arrival at the destination is 18-20 days for the US, 45 days for the UK, and 25-35 days for Australia. However, that estimate assumes smooth sailing through customs, which isn't guaranteed.

Once everything arrives at the fulfillment centers, then they begin packing and shipping the individual orders.

Status of Digital Content

We recently released the files for the Harvest Dragon STL and all the remaining VTT tokens via BackerKit. You should have gotten an email from BackerKit with your download link—if not please let us know and we can get you an updated notice. Here's a preview of all the tokens and frames you'll get in your download (162 versions in PNG, WEBP, and SVG formats):

Outstanding digital content that is still being developed and tested:

• Encounter for the Harvest Dragon
• Items and stat blocks, plus print and play reference cards for them
• Shep's Guide to Pets

Pictures!

Here are some pictures from our manufacturer of the final packaging for the accessory packs:

And here's the breakout of each package. First the barbarian pack's contents:

The cleric pack:

The druid pack:

The stretch goal adventuring kit pack:

Each kobold will also come with a folding tag that includes a little introductory bio for them (shown is the outside of the folding tag—the text is on the other side, the "inside"):

Happy holidays!

We deeply apologize for the arrival date slipping, though hopefully the fact that everything is on the move is good news. We are no longer at the mercy of manufacturing shutdowns, and shipping has actually cleared up pretty well for now. The postal service in various countries may be fairly overwhelmed with holiday shipping as well, though our fulfillment centers are aware of all the incoming packages and have indicated they should be ready to start shipping as soon as they get everything. Nord Games was kind enough to put us in touch with a different warehousing partner than the one originally planned for us because the first one was getting backlogged by holiday orders.

Thank you very much for your patience and your support! If you want to see previews of all the kobolds, they make regular appearances on our Gallant Goblin YouTube channel!  https://www.youtube.com/thegallantgoblin.  Luckily they work for fish, so we've been able to afford their appearance fees.   We hope our US friends had a good Thanksgiving weekend and that everyone has a safe, restful, and happy holiday season! You'll continue to hear from us as we get more information—when we get confirmation that shipments have arrived in their respective countries, when they reach the warehouses, and when the fulfillment centers start shipping to you!  

Until next time, stay safe, have fun, love each other, and we'll see you at the Gallant Goblin!   

Credit card charges & other updates
over 1 year ago – Wed, Nov 02, 2022 at 05:33:56 AM

In this update:

• Credit card charges are showing up as from KO-FI.COM but are actually from us
• Update on manufacturing dates
• Plushie Project We Love!

Credit card charges

We have heard from a number of backers that the BackerKit credit card charges came through as being from KO-FI.COM rather than something that would make sense for this project like KOBOLD PLUSHIES. BACKERKIT, or GALLANT GOBLIN. We apologize for the confusion!

If you got a charge between Oct. 28 and Oct. 31 from KO-FI.COM for an amount matching the additional charge in BackerKit, that is a legitimate charge from us for the Kobold Plushies.

What happened is that BackerKit uses Stripe to charge credit cards. We first set up our Stripe payment account for our ko-fi.com account a couple years ago and then reused it for BackerKit. We didn't realize that it defaulted to listing ko-fi as the payment source, which is what caused all the confusion. Again, we are very sorry we didn't catch this issue!

Update on manufacturing dates

We have a slightly delayed shipping date from our manufacturer for the plushies after their factory got hit by a COVID lockdown. They are telling us that all the plushies should be shipped by Nov. 10 and arrive at warehouses no later than 25 days later, which would be Dec. 5. We are coordinating with our fulfillment companies right now to make sure they know to expect the shipments and be ready to go as soon as they arrive!

Projects we love

We recently got approached by the folks at Spike & Crown to chat about running a plushie Kickstarter and have become enamored with their doggo plushie and the plan to make an animated film about him! Sancho looks to be a really big plushie, hence the higher price point, but if you're a dog lover and a plushie fan, you won't want to miss the opportunity to check this project out!:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spikeandcrown/sancho-heroic-plushie-friend?ref=gallantgoblin

BackerKit Charging Cards Oct. 24 and Overhead Tokens Release
over 1 year ago – Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 10:01:25 PM

Happy October! As we described in our last update, manufacturing should be on track to conclude around the end of October. As a result, we will be locking BackerKit and charging cards to ensure we have funds for fulfillment.

We will lock non-retailer BackerKit surveys and charge cards Monday Oct. 24, 2022!

• Those who backed as retail stores, your surveys will remain open longer as we promised during the campaign, likely into late November.
• If you need to update your order after your survey is locked, please reach out to us at [email protected] and we can individually update or unlock orders for you.

We are also excited to announce that we have released the first of our digital stretch goal packs. You should have gotten an email from BackerKit saying a new download is available to you for our overhead tokens. You can see the tokens in the pack in the image below:

The tokens are available in PNG, SVG, and WEBP formats and are sized at 400 pixels per inch. That means the kobolds and the baby owlbear are 400x400 pixels. The adult owlbear, goblin riding corgi, dire goat, and gralbliss are 800x800 pixels. The 5-headed kobold is 1200x1200 pixels.

The remaining tokens are in progress, as are the other digital stretch goals! We're super excited to be getting into the home stretch now! Please let us know if you have any questions!

Thank you!

Grady & Theo

The Gallant Goblin