March Update
19 days ago
– Sun, Mar 01, 2026 at 05:40:31 PM
Hello everyone,
Bradly here, back with another Wares Blade update. First off, I want to apologize for missing February’s update. I normally write these on the 30th of each month, and February being a short month completely threw me off. I just flat out lost track of time. That’s on me, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.
BackerKit Pledge Manager
The main topic for today is the pledge manager. This has taken a little longer than I anticipated, mostly because I had to reacclimate myself to BackerKit’s system. We haven’t used BackerKit for one of our post-campaign managers since Sainome Colosseum R back in 2018, and quite a bit has changed since then. The good news is that everything is now fully set up and ready to go. We’ll be sending out smoke tests starting tomorrow to make sure everything functions properly, and assuming those go smoothly, I expect to have all invites sent out by the end of next week. It will likely be sooner than that, but I prefer to give myself a little more runway than I actually need when it comes to these timelines.
BackerKit itself is very straightforward. You’ll receive a link at the email address associated with your Kickstarter account. When you click it, you’ll see the tier you backed, and you’ll have the opportunity to add on any items you may have missed or were on the fence about during the campaign. After that, you’ll enter your shipping address and pay for shipping. Once your BackerKit order is complete, you won’t need to touch it again unless you need to update your address later. If you run into any issues at all, the fastest way to resolve them is to email me directly at [email protected] or message me on Discord.
Wares Blade Beta
Now for what most of you have really been waiting for: the beta version of the book. All of the text has gone through multiple internal passes at this point, and we will be sending the beta out this month. I’m not going to give an exact date just yet, but it will be this month. As always, the purpose of the beta is primarily large-scale proofreading. There's only a handful of us reviewing this internally, yet there are roughly 2,500 of you. The simple reality is that a few thousand sets of eyes will catch things we won’t, and that process materially improves the final book.
To report any issues you find, I’ve created a dedicated channel in our Discord called “wares-blade-beta,” just like we’ve done for nearly all of our past Kickstarter books. That channel is exclusively for reporting errors. The format should be: Page Number: Issue Description. No replying to other reports, no commentary, and no general discussion in that channel. If you want to discuss the book, ask questions, or talk about mechanics, please use the main “wares-blade” channel instead. Keeping the beta channel clean and structured makes it much easier for us to track and correct everything efficiently.
Wrapping Up
That’s it for this month’s update. Next month, we’ll be focusing more on production progress. As always, thank you for backing Wares Blade and for supporting what we’re doing with the Legends of Japan line. If you need anything between now and the next update, please reach out. The best place to contact us is on Discord, where multiple team members are monitoring messages. All relevant social links are below:
Until next time!
Bradly & the LionWing Team
January Update
2 months ago
– Sun, Jan 18, 2026 at 08:32:11 PM
Hello everyone!
Bradly here, back with your latest Wares Blade update! It’s been a little while, so first things first: Happy New Year! 2026 is shaping up to be the year of Wares Blade in the West, and we’re incredibly excited about what this year has in store.
Progress Report
So, what’s been happening behind the scenes over the last six weeks? Well, quite a bit, in fact!
For starters, the book is fully translated! We’re currently hard at work on the first full editing pass. Once that initial pass is complete, we’ll be putting out the beta we discussed previously. That beta serves two important purposes:
- It gets the full book into your hands much sooner than waiting for version 1.0.
- It gives the community a chance to help us catch errors and inconsistencies.
Think of the beta as part early access and part community QA initiative. Your eyes and feedback genuinely help make the final book better.
Pledge Manager Update
What else has been going on? The pledge manager!
We intentionally held off on launching the pledge manager until the start of the year, as January is typically when new shipping rates are finalized. We expected an increase, and as of last week, that’s exactly what we got, with rates rising roughly 10% compared to this time last year, which is a bummer, but alas, here we are. Now that those numbers are more firmly locked in, we’re moving ahead with the PM. We’re currently aiming to have the pledge manager live in early February.
For the uninitiated, a Kickstarter pledge manager is the system used to:
- Collect shipping information
- Process shipping payments
- Allow late backers to join
- Let existing backers add items they may have missed during the campaign
The platform we use is (very creatively) called PledgeManager. This is the same system we’ve used for our last ten projects, so if you’ve backed anything from us in the past six-ish years, the process should feel familiar. For those who haven’t, our next Kickstarter update will include a step-by-step tutorial walking you through everything.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Wares Blade
Since our last update, we’ve also been in deeper discussions with the Japanese team about the future of Wares Blade, particularly here in the Western market.
We’d talked prior to the Kickstarter about possibilities beyond the core release, but intentionally held off on more concrete planning until we saw how the campaign performed. Given the strong response and turnout, we’ve now been able to move those conversations forward in a more meaningful way.
With translation complete and editing underway on the core rulebook, I felt comfortable initiating discussions with Shindosha about expanding the Wares Blade presence in English. We’ve landed on several promising ideas that would further support the TTRPG while also exploring other ways to dive deeper into WB’s unique world. We’ll be talking more about those plans later this year, but for now, just know that the future of Wares Blade is very bright.
Wrapping Up
That’s it for today’s update! Keep an eye out for the next one in the first half of February.
As always, if you need anything in the meantime, please reach out. If for some reason you still haven’t received your Playkit, let us know and we’ll get that sorted for you. The best place to contact us is Discord, where multiple team members are keeping an eye on messages. (Here on Kickstarter, it’s mostly just me doing my best to keep up!)
All relevant social links are below:
Until next time,
Bradly & the LionWing Team
November Update
4 months ago
– Sun, Nov 30, 2025 at 03:38:39 PM
Hello everyone,
Bradly here, back with your monthly Wares Blade update! We hope you’ve all been doing well. It’s been a little while since our last post, so let’s jump right in.
Translation, Editing, and Production Progress
As many of you are likely wondering what we’ve been up to, the answer is: a lot of translation work. We’re excited to share that we are officially finished with translating the entire book, save for the latter half of Appendix 3, which covers the spell list.
So, what’s next? Editing, editing, editing! The manuscript has now been handed off to our editors, who are already digging into it. We expect editing to take most of December, with layout and text insertion following throughout January. While we were hoping to have a beta copy ready this month—I personally had my heart set on another Christmas Eve shadow drop like we did with Kedamono Opera last year—that won’t be feasible, simply because the translation phase took a bit longer than we anticipated. This is an extremely dense book, after all!
What will begin in December, however, are prelim talks with the printer, so that we can have all our ducks in a row for when the book is ready to be sent off. We'll discuss with them product dimensions, material choices, die line templates, and the overall production timeline. So, while we won't have that beta to show off next month, we'll still be quite busy behind the scenes nailing down production logistics.
Playkit and Pledge Manager
On the community side, we’ve seen quite a few groups put together games using the playkit, and that has been incredibly fun to watch. If you’ve managed to get Wares Blade to the table already, we hope you had a blast! We’ve heard from several folks who’ve enjoyed the abridged rules, which is always energizing for the team. If you didn't get your playkit code, drop us a DM, and we'll get you squared away.
Next, let’s talk about the pledge manager, because many of you have noticed that the invites haven’t gone out yet. The pledge manager is where you’ll pay for shipping or add any extras you missed during the campaign. The reason for the wait is simple: shipping rates fluctuate constantly, both domestically and internationally. Holding off until we’re closer to fulfillment allows us to give you the most accurate rates possible.
If we launched today and rates dropped by March, you’d end up paying more than you need to. If we launched today and rates increased by March, we’d be forced to absorb that difference. Neither scenario helps anyone, so we’re delaying the PM until Q1 of next year to ensure fairness across the board.
Wrapping Up
And that’s everything for this month’s update! We’ll be back toward the end of December with one final update to close out 2025. As always, if anything comes up or you need to reach us, Discord is the fastest way to contact me, but you can also reach us through our other socials or via DM here.
Until next time!
Bradly & the LionWing Team
October Update: The playkit is here!
5 months ago
– Tue, Oct 14, 2025 at 07:35:39 PM
Hello, everyone!
Bradly here, back with your monthly Wares Blade update. It's been a little less than a month since our last post, and in that time, we've been capital-b Busy! So, let's dive right in!
Playkit
Today's update is a good one, as it brings good news! By now, some of you will have already received your playkit code from DriveThruRPG—and those who haven't gotten their code yet, you will in the next hour or so. We've been discussing this playkit for some time and have been working hard on it since the campaign's midpoint. Today, what you get is an 80+ page look at all the key elements of the game. With these 82 pages, you'll be able to run through a (relatively lean) session of WB to get a feel for what the game has to offer. While the final book's page count will be three to four times that of the playkit, this will give you just enough to work with to have some fun with the game while we wait for the beta version of the book at the end of the year.
A big shout-out to the team for cranking this thing out. While we'd initially planned the kit to be about 45 pages, as we got into putting it together, it became pretty clear that there was no way to give you all a playable demo of Wares Blade with just 40-50 pages; it's simply too dense a book for that low a page count. 82 pages is what it took. Please note that the kit's contents are subject to change as we complete the translation and further edit the full rulebook; thus, nothing in the kit is set in stone.
Beta
All of this talk about the playkit might make you forget about the beta release of the rulebook. As with all of our past TTRPGs, we'll be offering a beta version of Wares Blade so that you all can get an early look at the whole book and, more importantly, help us catch any errors that may have made it by our translation and editing team. This process of having thousands of sets of eyes on the book helps us spot issues that our limited perspective might have missed.
This mass proofreading exercise has always helped us produce very tightly edited and proofed books, and with this being our biggest book yet, this exercise will go a long way in making sure that what you all get in the end is a clean and polished product. We'll be opening up an editing channel in our Discord just as we have with all past projects, where folks can report the issues they find. I'll talk more about that when the beta hits, so stay tuned!
Wrapping Up
And that's it for today's update! As I mentioned in September's update, post-campaign, I move to monthly updates rather than daily or weekly ones; however, we're continually monitoring the comments and our DMs if you should need to reach out about something between updates.
And speaking of reaching out to us... If you want to chat with us or other Wares Blade fans in real-time, be sure to drop by our Discord. Or if you have a question and you'd rather get hold of us through social instead of Kickstarter, you can do that too! All of those links are below.
Once again, thank you so much for your support and continued enthusiasm for Wares Blade, and we hope you enjoy the playkit!
Until next time!
Bradly & the LionWing Team
That's a wrap! 2,400% funded!
6 months ago
– Thu, Sep 18, 2025 at 06:56:26 PM
Hello everyone!
Bradly here, back with your very first post-campaign update! That's right, the Wares Blade Kickstarter campaign has officially come to a close. And what a wild final 24 hours it was!
When we launched this project three weeks ago, I didn't know what was in store for us. This was the hardest campaign thus far to predict what the turnout was going to be. As I mentioned in my thank-you video, and then again in the week-one AMA, I wasn't sure if anyone was going to care about Wares Blade the way the LionWing team did. After all, no one has brought a Japanese TTRPG to the West 35 years after its initial release. And while retro TTRPGs are becoming more of a thing lately—though they're still not a huge market, relatively speaking—retro TTRPGs that never left Japan have most definitely NOT been a thing (until now!).
So while I certainly hoped people would show up for this project, never did I imagine they'd do so to the tune of 2,500 backers and 2,400% of our funding goal. Truth be told, I thought that if it were a success, the campaign would likely come in somewhere below the numbers we usually put up on Kickstarter, just given the niche nature of the game. It was wonderful to be so wrong.
So then, a huge thank-you goes out to everyone who showed up for this campaign, who wanted a retro Japanese TTRPG, and who was willing to trust us with this particular one. We've never seen success like this on Kickstarter, and it wouldn't have been possible without all of you. I'm so glad that so many people are along for the ride with us. And what a ride this campaign was.
Of course, there's still a lot of work to do! In fact, the real work starts now. We'll be keeping you updated every step of the way going forward as development continues. Which begs the question: What is next, now that the Kickstarter is over? Well, let's talk about that.
Playkit Release
If you've kept up with the comments or the conversations in our Discord, you know that we've been working on a playkit. This kit will allow folks to run some simple games of WB, to get a general feel of the core mechanics. This kit is also complete; we just need to format it, which is what we're currently working on. We expect to have this ready in the next week or so.
Beta Release
If you've backed any of our TTRPG Kickstarters, the following information won't be a surprise to you. However, if this is your first time checking us out, then I've got good news to share. While the delivery date for this project isn't until May 2026, we expect to have a beta copy of the book ready for all backers by the end of the year (with the exception of $1 backers who haven't upgraded by the time the beta drops). Right now, we're eyeing December as the release window. In years past, we've dropped betas right around Christmas—last year we released the beta on Christmas Eve—just as a little holiday present.
Pledge Manager & Late Pledges
Like with all of our previous campaigns, we'll be handling post-campaign shipping through a third-party. We've used a platform aptly titled PledgeManager in the past for these purposes, but we may go a different route this time around. We used BackerKit for our very first Kickstarter back in 2019, and we may revisit that partnership, just given how much larger this project is compared to our past campaigns. Regardless of which platform we use, the user experience will be the same; via that platform, you'll confirm your shipping address, pay for your shipping, and then add on any items you may have missed while the campaign was live. As we get closer to opening up the pledge manager, we'll give you all a full rundown on how to navigate things, so stay tuned for that!
If you missed the campaign while it was live, you can still support the project, right here on Kickstarter, in fact. Kickstarter now allows for late-backing right after a campaign ends (if the creator enables that option). You do that right from the campaign page, just as you would if you were pledging while the project was live.
Wrapping Up
And that will do it for today's update. Going forward, I won't be posting updates every few days. We'll be shifting to a monthly update, but we'll still be answering your questions in the comments section and elsewhere in real-time. We'll also post more than once a month at certain points, specifically when we achieve a milestone, so the stream of updates will continue, just with slightly reduced speed.
Naturally, if you want to keep the hype train going for Wares Blade, you can join our Discord, where there's always some WB conversation happening. That link, and the rest of our socials, are below.
Once again, thank you so much for your support over the past three weeks. You've shown that Wares Blade probably should've come to the West years—or perhaps decades—ago. But I'm glad it's coming to the West now, and everyone on the LionWing Wares Blade team is honored to be playing a part in the ushering in of this beloved franchise to a brand new audience.
We'd also like to say that we've seen your enthusiasm and desire for additional Wares Blade content, be that in the form of more TTRPG releases or other WB media, like the novels. I think it's safe to say that, after how successful this Kickstarter was, we're not going to be done with Wares Blade any time soon.
And with that, I bid you all a good night. You all are the best.
Until next time!
Bradly & the LionWing Team