On December 14th, 2007, the word “Tephra” gained a new meaning. Daniel Burrow (Our Fearless Leader) had been wanting to create a new world, one that combined his knowledge of world building with the artistic visions of his friend, Amanda Longoria. On December 14th, while driving from Austin to San Marcos, TX, the name finally hit him: Tephra. He and Amanda were up until the wee hours of the morning working on Tephra. In that first week, ayodins, Izedans, Hauds, farishtaas, and satyrs were all created. Though a lot would change over the years, those first few days set the groundwork for everything that was to come.
As Tephra progressed, we realized that no other system out there was quite the right fit, so we made our own. Daniel spent 4 solid days designing first rough system with another friend, Zeeshan Waheed. On the final day, they sent their notes to Amanda, who compiled them into the first “playtesting document.” These documents were printed out in what became the iconic three ring red binders, and the first ever playtest of Tephra took place (most ironically) on June 7, 2008 – the same day as Worldwide D&D day.
First Playtesting Copy of Tephra. The Iconic Red Binder.
Over the course of that first summer, a lot happened for Tephra. The company, Cracked Monocle, was formed. Several writers and developers were added to staff: Brandon Stevens and Zeeshan Waheed on the side of game development while Garrett Sweet, Andrew Watson, and Kevin Walkup began as writers. Alex Whisenhunt was brought in to help make maps, though at the time we had no idea that our cartographer would eventually become our acclaimed Marketing Director.
Our staff has changed a lot since that original summer. Many people have left the company to do other things, and we’ve added a few amazing people. Hank White joined us in early 2009, coming in to do marketing and eventually becoming Tephra’s gameplay director. (If you’re good at picking up trends, you’ll see that none of us knew what our eventual roles would become.) Victor G. Helton joined up later in 2009, and he’s been our primary artist for Tephra. Tyler Hudson joined us not long after Ikkicon 2010 (where he played in several games), and he’s been working on crafting systems ever since. Marc Seidel became a part of the Tephra clan in May of 2010, right before A-kon. Marc joined us with a huge amount of writing, and we threw him into the fire at A-kon 2010, where he ran a ton of demo games. Dana Schwarzlose is our newest member, but I couldn’t tell you how we did anything before she came along: she’s now our merchandising director, and you’ll most often see her behind our booth, making sure that nobody walks by without trying out our game.
Tephra 4.5, Debuted at A-kon 2010
December 31, 2009 was when the bump first started to show. We had been playing with our friends, running some small gaming days down at Texas State University – San Marcos. We had been in development for just about two years. But on December 31, 2009, we debuted at Ikkicon IV, an anime convention in Austin, TX. With a staff of 6, we ran games all weekend long. It was a blast, and the feedback was phenomenal. We showed up with books printed on a school computer and bound with $2 comb bindings. We sold them to anybody who wanted one for some five bucks. It was the start – it was when Tephra’s pregnancy started to show.
Tephra 4.3, Ikkicon 2010, Tephra's first public display.
As the year progressed, we hit up A-kon in Dallas and San Japan in San Antonio. It was late in the summer of 2010 that we started doing open playtesting at Dragon’s Lair in Austin, one of our friendly local gaming stores. We originally started on Thursdays, but, within a few short months transferred over to Mondays. Over a year and a half later and we’ve been running Tephra every Monday since.
At Tephra’s second Ikkicon in January 2011, Tephra started using a professional printing company for its playtesting books. We continued to improve on the formatting, the content, and the art over the course of the year. In 2011, we released versions 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.4, 4.8, 4.8x, and 4.9. Throughout the course of this single year, Tephra underwent many changes and refinements with the help of feedback from playtesters and our lore became more and more refined. Our community also underwent a huge change as we went from 30-40 playtesters, to having over 250 books being tested throughout the United States.
Tephra version 4.7
As we moved into 2012, we hit up Ikkicon with our final playtesting release. So close to the final version but with only pennies in our pocket, we asked our fans to help: we put up our kickstarter. Our goal was simple, raise enough money for us to do a small print run and begin to approach retailers about selling our game.
January 4, 2012 our Kickstarter opened, we held our breath and didn’t even bother to look at the numbers until we suddenly got an email, “Congratulations you have broken your $1,000 goal!” Woah, wait, what? It had been less than ten hours since we launched the Kickstarter, and already we were above and beyond our target. Four hours later we broke $1,600, and three days after that we broke $4,000. It was about here that the Cracked Monocle staff started having nightly fits of breaking into dance.
Growth on the Kickstarter stayed steady, but began to level off, leaving us at about $8,000 at the end of our second week. Already we had decided to add some additional kickbacks to those supporting us on the projects and significantly increase the size of our initial print run, however we weren’t expecting to much further growth the last two weeks. Then came Clockwork Con….
Cracked Monocle at Wild Wild West Con 2011
January 20, 2012 we stepped into Clockwork Con, a convention run by Alex Whisenhunt in Austin, TX. For the most part we expected to see the normal Texas steampunk crowd and simply enjoy the weekend around folks with similar interests to our own. Low and behold though, Tephra grabbed the attention of many folks both from the area and from out of state. The Monday following the event, after some wonderful write-ups on our game hit the web, our Kickstarter growth rate nearly tripled. In 2 days we jumped over $2,000, and before we knew it, we broke $10k, and with the excitement building continued to climb into our last week.
Thrilled and looking to spark more interest, we decided to toss another goodie in the bag for folks backing our project. If we broke $13,000, we would let the community decide on a dance for us to film and record. I’m still not sure anyone is looking forward to performing “I’m Sexy and I Know It,” but we are going to put a steampunk spin on it and have a great weekend in Austin shooting at iconic locations around the city. We also made the decision to add some artwork to our adversary booklet and print a large banner with all the backers names on it as we neared $20,000.
February 4, 2012 our Kickstarter ended, and all we could do was sit back in amazement. We had come so far in just a month, that sputtering thanks over and over again for the amazing support of our community and backers is all we could do. With all of your help, we closed our Kickstarter with a mind blowing $22,821 raised! On February 4, 2012, all of you brought Tephra to life. We may have helped shape, define and build her, but it is our community that made it possible for us to bring her into the world. We couldn’t be here today without you, and for that we can never thank you enough. You have made our dreams come true, and we hope you will continue to ride this wild wave with us as we continue to grow and work on shaping Tephra into a game that folks will be talking about for ages.
~The Cracked Monocle Staff
