End of year update: prototyping, funding, and hiring, huzzah!
Destination: Launch 2023.
As the year draws to a close, we wanted to share what we’ve been up to—we’ve come so far from starting this adventure just a year ago! Highlights include:
Prototyping - Towards the end of the year we shifted our focus from experimentation to polish, and we plan to start closed testing in January.
Funding - We raised our funding target to grow our team and fuel growth in 2023. Huzzah again! Learn more about our approach to funding here.
Hiring - We recently hired a UX designer and a software engineer, and we’re on track to bring on another engineer and a community manager in early 2023.
Tech progress report: Behind the Screen
In our new Behind the Screen series, Josh breaks down all things technical in the way of Bringing Fire. Here’s a rundown of our recent prototyping progress. For more detail, check out the full post.
Networked notes - Characters, organizations, locations—they all relate to one another, and your documents should reflect that. The Composer now makes it easy to track relationships and interactions by linking between docs and extracting and embedding content from one doc to another.
Copy-paste - We’ve added the rich_clipboard plug-in to enable copying and pasting of formatted text. Find it on our Github and pub.dev.
Maps - We have basic support for creating, marking, and zooming and panning around your maps. Plus, we have plans to use the UVTT file format supported by most dungeon cartography software and virtual tabletops.
API Server - We gave the Composer a local API server so other systems can integrate directly with it and, for example, retrieve a GM’s campaign data.
FoundryVTT integration - Atop that API we built a FoundryVTT module to sync docs and maps from the Composer to FoundryVTT.
You can find documentation for the API server and the FoundryVTT module on our Github.
Looking ahead
It takes a village of GM personas
As prototyping shifts from basic functionality to more GM-specific features, we’re distilling what we learned from interviewing GMs into a set of design priorities for product development. Questions on our mind:
Which features would serve the most GMs regardless of style, experience, or technical literacy?
Which features would integrate well with other GM tools like Foundry?
Which features are “need to have” vs. “nice to have” when we go to market?
Answering these questions has helped us build the roadmap to hire the dream team and fire on all cylinders toward our beta, launch, and beyond.
Growing the team
Our Bringing Fire party is growing! In the last few months of 2022, we added a UX designer and a software engineer to our ranks. These amazing new hires will help us ramp up our development timeline to launch Campaign Composer in 2023. Looking , we will be looking to add another software engineer and a community manager to help us launch our early access program. If you’re interested in joining our party, check out our open positions posted on the job board here.
Beta testing
The Campaign Composer is in a stage of development we call “alpha.” Definitions for “alpha,” “beta,” and other stages vary, but for us, “alpha” means it cannot yet be used for its intended purpose. While some fire-bringer GMs have generously volunteered as testers, at this stage, they’re just testing fundamentals, such as whether copy-and-paste works, as opposed to fully realized features.
There are two major milestones between now and our targeted August 2023 release. First: a closed beta, starting in January. Second: general early access by June..
Beta testing will begin when we have an application that’s legitimately better for running a campaign than Google Docs is, for a significant minority of GMs. At that point, we think many of you will enjoy the opportunity to start playing with the Composer, because there’s a good chance you could start running your campaigns in it.
Extracurriculars
Introducing Blaze
We’re pleased to welcome a new member to the Bringing Fire team! Meet Game Master Blaze. Don’t be surprised if you see them frolicking around our sites, emails and comms from here on out.
The GM Zero series
While Josh and Avery are battle-tested GMs, Stephanie is still getting their GM legs under them. That’s why she started the GM Zero series for newbies who want to make the leap from player to GM. While prepping their first sessions on the Campaign Composer prototype, Stephanie found some striking parallels between what it takes to be a great GM and what it takes to be a great leader. They also put together a helpful guide for recruiting players into your campaign, something we’ve all struggled with at one point or another throughout our time as game masters
Gencon: mischief managed
Josh & Avery checking into Gencon ‘22
The Bringing Fire team and friends made the rounds at Gencon in August with some new branded tees, checking out the Glass Cannon live shows, visiting some kick*ss panels, and talking shop at the Gameboard booth. We had some great conversations and feedback from the folks at Paizo, Foundry, Kobold Press, and Syrinscape.
Gameboard + FoundryVTT booth at Gencon ‘22
Josh and Avery unwittingly bought art from the same amazing artist, Devin Elle Kurtz, because…dragons!!! Stephanie bought way too many sparkly rainbow dice and learned how to scoot around like a pro. 🛴🛴🛴
