WOW! It's really hard to believe that NEXT WEEK is Gen Con! We've been working so hard for so long to get to this point, it's almost surreal knowing that in a little over seven days, we'll be demoing our baby, Untold, to hundreds of gamers! It's tremendously exciting and intimidating, all at the same time. After Gen Con, our plans had us heading towards Dragoncon, but as many of you have already seen, we're sad to say that we're not going to be able to make it to the largest con in the southeast this year. However, you can bet your bottom dollar (or maybe your Race card, to coin an Untold-based phrase) that Dragoncon will be firmly in our sites for next year.

For now, however, we have to bear down and focus on the days ahead: Gen Con, completeing our final phase of playtest and then -- the race to lauch! We're hoping to have everything in place for a launch sometime this fall, so if you're one of our playtesters, we need your feedback ASAP and please make it as detailed as possible. We're feeling really good about the changes we've made to Untold, but we really need to hear what you guys and gals have to say about them. So if you have not already, please mosey on over to the Playtest Feedback section of our formus and sound off!

We really NEED YOU to help us make Untold better! We really appreciate it, too! Not just your playtest feedack, but everything each of you've been doing - joining our Writer's and Website groups, posting on the forum, liking and sharing our updates and posts on Facebook, MySpace and FriendFeed, retweeting our updates on Twitter - every little bit really helps! We know that we couldn't have made it this far if it weren't for each and every one of you. We're looking forward to the exciting days ahead and we KNOW that we'll have each of you along for the ride. We hope you're excited as well, won't you invite a friend or three along for the ride?

Til next time!

Untold: Horizons

• Initial playtests of Untold's latest (and hopefully last) revision are bearing out to be better than we expected! Faster, easier, more streamlined - these are just a few of the terms we're hearing and we could not be happier! There are stll some small bugs here and there that we need to work, but for such a MAJOR overhaul of the system (so far) we're pleased as punch!
• Work on the new Studio is progressing well! The power's all in and working (new fans, sconces, lights, etc...) and our MAMMOTH A/C has arrived. Now we're just waiting on the replacement windows to move to the next phase: installation, painting and final clean-up/move in. We were hoping to be settled by the end of August, but due to work travel for many of the WM, it looks like it will be sometime in September. Check our Facebook profile for progressive pics!
• Babelcon (Baton Rogue, LA) went really well for us, despite the small attendance and the reduced support we had present (we're SUPER THANKFUL for the support we had, however!!). While it was not a major Untold con, our book sales were surprising! What? You say you didn't know the Wandering Men had a book out? Well, you need to head here!
• GenCon (Indianapolis, IN) is our next and final con for the year; I've said plenty about that already, so...
• DragonCon (Atlanta, GA) - as noted above, we'll not be at Dragoncon this year, but next year things will be different. As far as Cap's new adventure, we'll have to see. Maybe we'll give it out to our newsletter subscribers as a special treat and make everyone else wait until next year @ Dragoncon. Let me know what you think - post in the forums!
• The Insiders have been churning out the content and now they even have access to a special area where they get to see even more Untold art! If you're interested in joining us, please contact Ashy (ashy@wanderingmen.com) and he'll get you access!
• Keep an eye out on the forums for new information regarding Lead Developer positions within WMS - we're looking for awesome writers who can deliver!
• Lotsa new art is coming in and we've only now started assigning the large sets of art. Insiders (and all) can expect LOTS more stunning art - coming very soon!
• As soon as we complete playtest and lock down our design, we're already set to begin development for a NEW Untold Video Primer and a Flash Primer to boot!
• We're still working those website updates - they're comin', don't ya worry!
• Speaking of the website, you need to keep your eyes peeled for a brand new fiction series, coming from an awesome author that some of you might know!

Untold: Secrets

The Untold Art Train is chuggin' along fiercely! Lots of contracts flying out the door and loads of gnarly art coming back in! I'm almost afraid of the day when it slows down, in fact! One of my favorite things about being an AD is being THE FIRST to see new art fresh from the artist's pen! I'll be sad when my email box is not filled (daily) with mind-warping cool pieces of art. Well, I guess that means that YOU GUYS AND GALS will have to make sure that simply doesn't happen! How can you do that, you ask? Simply tell EVERYONE you know about how awesome and cool Untold is and when we go on sale - BUY TONS!  :D

If anyone out there has a cool idea for highlighting our tremendous art in any other way, please let us know! Chime in on our forums and let us know what other ways you'd like to see this art used? Want a T-shirt with your favorite piece on it? What about a poster? What about some sort of cool gallery on the website that showcases these pieces? I'm sure your ideas are about 100,000,000 times better than those but unless you tell us about them, all we're left with are these puny idears! PLEASE let us know what your ideas are and we'll see what we can do about making them happen! After all, many brains are more powerful than just a few! This month, we're giving you a glimpse of just a bit of some of the AWESOME stuff that we have comin' in!

Again, we ask that you keep this secret and not share these pieces -- we want the newsletter to be the only place where folks can see what's coming for Untold. Feel free to talk about how awesome these new images are, however - on the forums, on Facebook, on Twitter - where ever! Hey, if you even want to blog about them - let us know, we just might send the images to you for *that* very special purpose!

Without further ado:

"New" Kilk Tripod by Edward Frayna


L'na Twilight - "Mindlash" by Laura Sloan


Apoc High-bred - "Black-Ops" by Chris Miscik


L'na Dawn - "Goliath" by Laura Sloan

Got an idea for where these guys might come from? Got a cool backstory that matches the images? Do these images inspire you to write a short story or two? If so, post 'em in our forum! We'd love to see what you come up with!

Untold: Gaming

Untold: Answers

This is the section where we like to answer questions that we receive from fans, or possibly address a "FAQ" or "Frequently Asked Question". Feel free to contact us with your questions for this section, or simply post them in the forum. What's the question for this month? It comes from Dave Edens, of Huntsville, Alabama, actually. Dave asks:

...On setting, are you working on a setting bible of some sort? Write things in stone to establish a setting continuity?

One of our core Untold concepts is "NO BOOKS!"; this decision has its footing in not only the fact that we're creating a card-based game, but also the trends towards digital distribution and mobile gaming that we believe the gaming market is heading. One might say the conversion of those two things is a lucky course of events for us, but we believe otherwise. We don't believe in luck...  :)

So, technically, there will NOT be a core setting book, but we ARE working on fleshing out the setting to a certain degree. We will never develop Splintered Serenity (or any of our future campaign settings) to the level that most gamers are familiar with - we want to leave that to the individual GMs and their Players to fill in. We will, however, provide the skeleton, the basic framework of the world and what's happening in it, so that GMs and Players can decide what they want to include and what they don't. Basically, this is the thing that most groups do anyway, so instead of fighting the norm, we're moving towards it. So yes, we will definitely have some things "in stone", but other things will be VERY FLUID and mutable.

So fluid, in fact, that we're opening our campaign setting up to the fans! We've created what we're calling an Open Campaign Setting - we want to actively involve the folks that play Untold into the creation and modification of the world in which they play! Think about it - almost every game you've ever been in, your group has changed something - made the world grow. Maybe your GM created a whole new culture of critters that fit perfectly in a certain section of the world. Or maybe you had a great idea for a new race you wanted to play and you and your GM worked together to make it a reality. As we all know, every GM creates their own items, monsters, and NPCs (Non-Player Characters) from time to time. Normally, these things are never known by the developers of any given campaign setting, unless they happen to read about it somewhere online, but with Untold, we want to not only encourage this practice, we want to REWARD it.

What does that mean, exactly? It means that we're going to give the folks that play Untold and craft new items, powers, monsters, races, or locations a chance to have their creations actually become a part of the game - an official part of the canon. Not only will they get card credit for these new creations, they'll also be added to a list of Untold Developers, displayed upon the website for all to see. A "Hall of Fame", if you like... How's that going to work, exactly? Well, now that's a question for another day and another newsletter, now isn't it?

For now, however, we're hoping to make the skeleton that I mentioned above avaliable through our website - a wiki-type site with some interactive map features. All that work is occuring in the background, but if anyone reading this newsletter is a web-whiz who would like to help out - we'd love to hear from ya. Just drop Ashy a note at ashy@wanderingmen.com - he'll be happy to talk to you and get back to you ASAP.

If you have a question for our newsletter - we'd love to hear from you! Please head over to our forums and let us know. We'll be sure and include your questions (and a suitable answer) in a future newsletter!