Kibbles' Compendium of Airships and Artifacts for D&D 5e

August 2026 Update! Wrapping up the last few things and setting up for the KCAA Draft.
about 1 month ago – Tue, Sep 01, 2026 at 05:18:41 PM

Hi Folks-

There's not too much to say at the moment, beyond that work continues at a steady pace. We will get the next Playtest Packet via Backerkit at the end of the week, and this will be the last Playtest Packet in the current form; after this Playtest Packet, the content will be converted to the KCAA Draft, but will be a few drafts from done.

The KCAA Draft means it'll be moved over to all being one PDF created in InDesign, and is mostly a formatting and polish change, but is the finished product taking shape as playtesting and editing pushes toward formatting and polish. This mostly waits on art assets and editing.

Currently things are being playtested and edited. We have all of the player options, but I'm still wrapping up the Airship system, some crafting elements, and some custom content. I don't have a firm ETA on those, but I'll be working on those throughout the month. 

The Gravity Spells and Mystic Path will be in this update, as well as some miscellaneous content (a few pieces of custom content, the last few subclasses that were previously posted but not in the playtest packet yet, the Paragon v0.8 update, and a crafting update).

I did mention last time a concern with the battlemap production schedule. I did get an update there, and have some more share (above!), but am still behind schedule there, so will probably be reaching out to some of the folks suggested last time or other creators to help supplement the schedule.

Other than that, we are generally close to schedule. Custom content and airship combat are both a little behind where I'd hoped I'd be, and the overall schedule is running a little late, but not drastically so. I have a big chunk out for a editing at the moment, and editing will continue pretty much non-stop from this point forward.

The Griffon's Saddlebag: Books Three and Four

As some of the keen eyed will have noticed, it is not technically August. I did in fact delay a day because I wanted to use this update to share with the launch of another special 5e Kickstarter: The Griffon's Saddlebag: Books Three and Four

While Griffon's Saddlebag needs little introduction from me, I'm happy to provide one anyway. Griffin is a long time friend in the industry, and a creator I'm always happy to recommend to audience. According to my summer survey, of all the 3rd party creators out there, Griffon's Saddlebag overlaps the most with my own audience, so many of you already are familiar with his work, and for the rest of the folks out there, you can rest assured knowing that many of your peers think he makes good stuff.

Griffon primarily makes magic items for 5e (so many magic items!) but the book is full of goodies. I'll let him give the summary:

The award-winning Griffon’s Saddlebag returns with two new books, compiling four years of content into nearly a thousand pages of exciting new magic items, player options, settings, and monsters! Inside you’ll find a staggering total of:

• Nearly 1000 illustrated, game-ready magic items
• 48 playtested subclasses—four per core class
• 3 new playable races/species
• 28 campaign-agnostic settings, and paired with over a hundred new statblocks

Last but not least, I will probably be releasing crafting recipes for all of the magic items in the books, so from that point of view it'll be the largest expansion to my crafting system yet.

Go check it out!

Closing Bits

That's all I got for you folks. As always, feel free to drop by the Discord if you have any other questions or want the latest play-by-play updates.

All the best,

-Kibbles

July 2026 Update! Summery Survey, Updates, and More
3 months ago – Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 12:19:56 PM

Hey Folks-

This is going to be a shorter update as there isn't too much to add beyond that work continues, which I will get into in a moment, but first...

2026 Summery Survey

If you have ~5 minutes to spare, I'd appreciate it if you would fill out this year's Summer Survey. This doesn't directly impact the Kickstarter, but the last few years of surveys impacted this Kickstarter, so this influences whatever comes next. The survey is how I stay connected with the audience and prioritize what sort of things to work on. What edition ya'll are playing, where you are playing it, what other games people are playing, etc.

Here's a link: https://forms.gle/QY2F7WNXDywL3saSA

Spell and Feat Theme Voting Winners

So the vote winners for the Spell Theme and Feat theme were... both Gravity. Gravity won both, and by quite a lot. Which I suppose I should have seen coming, since Gravity also won the Spell Theme for KCCC and KCLL. 

But that does mean there are already a good number of gravity spells, and now we'll have another set to build on that, as well as a set of gravity feats. You'll see those coming into the Playtest Packet in the next few updates. There are a few already in the July Playtest Packet (which goes out through Backerkit) and there will be a few more coming up.

The Schedule

I will say that things are running a little behind. The only red flag remains battlemaps. I'm currently looking into some back up plans there, but if you are or know a battlemap artist, perhaps get in touch. I'm still working with Renflowergrapx, but I do have concerns with the schedule, so I'm looking into what I can do.

Custom content work continues into July; I will try to wrap up in this month, but haven't yet. This is a pretty minor item all things considered.

The Cartomancy Occultist appears in the July Playtest Packet (though not fully fleshed out), so with that we have all* the subclasses that will appear in the book (we may get more added from patreon or to fill open spots, but that's all the promised ones). From here on out, the main focus will be revision and testing of the player content, finishing custom content, and, of course, fleshing out the crafting, artifact, and airship content. I would expect the next update to be primarily focused on that.

I do expect that we are running late. I do think August will flesh out the remaining things, and September will likely be content to complete, I don't think September will be full formatted and what not. I expect September's Playtest Packet to be the last 'playtest packet' and then move to the official PDF (as in, made in InDesign with functional table of content, art layout, etc) rather than the cobbled together style of the current PDFs) in October as we get into heavy editing work, but timelines should be written in pencil and taken with grains of salt as my best guess and intentions.

Anyway, I think things are going pretty well, but are predictable, slipping the ideal schedule.

As always, for folks that want to get in the trenches for the play-by-play, there is always Discordwhere I share what I'm working on as I go a bit more. The wrapped up July Playtest Packet should go out on Backerkit within a day or two, I just need to zip it up and what not.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, issues with your pledge, or anything like that. The pledge manager should be open to all at this point.

All the best,

-Kibbles

June 2026 Update! Spell & Feat Poll, Playtest Packet, Pledge Over Time Complete, and the a shoutout for Machine of Blood and Bone
4 months ago – Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 12:16:41 PM

Spell & Feat Themes Poll

The last of the Backer Stretch Goal Polls, forSpells and Mystic Path/Active Martial feat Themes. As with the previous polls, the ideas here were all previously submitted by backers. I've tried to keep as many of the options as possible, but trimmed out a few that I didn't think I could write, didn't understand what they would entail, or wouldn't be possible to make multiple spells/ideas out of.

Go vote for what you want!

Updates & Progress

At a high level, we have 3 new subclasses and 1 new Paragon Pursuit since last month:

• Titan Warlock (Backer Vote Winner) [Playtest Packet June Update]
• Machine God Domain Cleric (Backer Vote Winner) [Playtest Packet June Update]
• Symbiotic Origin Paragon (Patreon Vote Winner) [Paragon v0.7 Update]
• Lightning Pursuit Paragon [Paragon v0.7 Update]

This means that there was 1 unfinished subclass for the book, which is the Occultist Cartomancy winner from the poll. I expect we will have that in the next update. I actually expect we'll have a lot in the next update, as June is shaping up to be productive so far.

Pay Over Time, Pledge Mangers & Custom Content

I believe that folks that did Pay Over Time should have completed all of their payments by now. This means that should have access to the Pledge Manager now. Everyone (as far as I know) should have access to the Pledge Manger now, so if you still don't, feel free to reach out to me again.

I'd delayed some of the custom content work since a lot of folks that were at those tiers were pledge over time, but those should all come in. I will try to place a certain priority on that this month, so if you haven't heard from me in a custom content tier, expect that it's likely you will either this month or early next month.

Once the last subclass + custom content is done, the player content will be heavy playtesting and editing, while I tackle the airship and artifact bits. Expect more updates on that probably at the end of next month unless I get ahead of schedule this month.

Double Surveys On Late Pledges

For a small number of folks (roughly a dozen), you will have had two surveys, and consequently had to fill things out twice or gotten spammed. This happened to some folks that did a late pledge to the Kickstarter, and was my fault.

Essentially what happened was that someone reached out to me telling me that they didn't have access to the Pledge Manager after late pledging. I looked into it and discovered that none of the recent late pledges did. Because I'm a moron, instead of asking Backerkit what's up, I just assumed that their process had stopped running for late pledges, and manually ported them over.

Well, it turns out that their process had just been down/delayed temporarily, so eventually it ran, and.. added those pledges I'd just manually added again. So those folks all got duplicated surveys in the Pledge Manager. I've since fixed this problem, but if you were being spammed to complete a second pledge, that's why.

No one was charged again, and no action is needed from anyone (unless I've already emailed you individually, in which case you already know about this).

Schedule Transparency

One thing I do believe in keeping folks in the loop, even if the news is bad news. On that note, I'd flag basically two things: first, I am running slightly slower than I'd hoped. I had some health issues the last months, but last month in particular. Currently it's looking better, but I'm not quite where I wanted to be in getting the KCAA Draft ready.

Second and potentially more severe, I need to flag that the Battlemap Production is quite a bit behind target. This is not inherently a problem, it all depends on how fast the artist can produce maps, and I think that asset production has taken longer than expected, and the current map is a pretty big a fancy one (see below), but since this is a lever I have relatively little control over (since its being done externally) I want to keep folks in the loop that there's potential schedule delays. The good news is that it sounds like she has already 75+ assets as part of the asset pack, which is more than I was expecting, so even if maps are behind schedule, we may end up getting more than expected in some areas.

At this point, I'm not going to say anything has an obvious potential to be delayed—I think on my front, I can make up any ground this month, and with the Battlemaps, I simply don't know yet, but I do want to tell folks as soon as I notice when it comes to things.

Machines of Blood and Bone

Last but not least, I want to give a shoutout to a Kickstarter that's launched today from somanyrobots,Machines of Blood and Bone. This is the second book from somanyrobots following Songs of the Spellbound Sea, and brings two new classes (Necromancer and Abomination), 20+ subclasses, 100+ new spells, and dozens of magic items.

For those familiar with the Abomination class, I've written a psionic subclass for it, Nature of the Mind. Somanyrobots has done excellent work in the past, is a friend of mine, and I've seen nothing but praise for the first book, so I'm confident in recommending you check out this second entry—I've already backed it myself.

Closing Notes

As always, for those that want the most deatiled updates on everything, stop by the Discord, where I've been posting the new pieces of content 1-by-1 for feedback and thoughts.

There is a new monthly Patreon poll, but I think that new patreon content moving forward from here will not be in KCAA. I have to draw the line somewhere, and I think that everyone would be happier with running the schedule on time as much as possible rather than adding things that weren't intended for the book. That said, the show must go on over at Patreon, so for folks that any the stream of new content that represents, the door's always and open and the light are always on over there!

All the best,

-Kibbles

May 2026 Update! Subclass Poll Part 2, Playtest Packet, Digital Downloads, Pledge Over Time Explained, and more!
5 months ago – Tue, May 05, 2026 at 05:45:05 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Backerkit Pledge Manage rolled out for everyone!
5 months ago – Thu, Apr 23, 2026 at 12:37:20 PM

Super short update to let you know the Pledge Manager has rolled out for everyone:

Some quick notes:

• Shipping. It will not collect shipping payments until much closer to actual shipping. This is to ensure that shipping is accurate, and, more importantly, allow adjustments for a longer period of time before everything is locked down (so people don't have to reach out to me any time they want to change their add-ons or their address).
• Pledge Modifications. You can add items to your pledge or modify your pledge. If there is a modification you are unable to make, you can reach out to Backerkit Support for help and they should be able to help you.
• Credits. For people at the tiers that come with credit in the book, it will ask you what you want to be credited as. Since I don’t want to assume people want their real name in the book, if that is filled out, you will not be credited. You are, of course, free to use your real name or username, though use common sense—user names that are inappropriate or very long will not be accepted.
• Custom Content. Folks at custom content tiers will get a special question letting them enter their idea.
• Digital Downloads. I will target sometime next week for distributing the digital downloads that are already complete (PDFs and VTT versions of previous books).
• Late Pledges/Pre-orders. I will be shutting down Late Pledges via Kickstarter and moving to the Backerkit Store for preorders. This shouldn’t impact folks here.
• Apple Email Relays. I've seen an issue before where if you set up Kickstarter account through an Apple Account and you don't have your actual email attached to your Kickstarter account, the Pledge Manager email might not go through the relay (as it tends to discard emails that come through the relay not from what it expects). If this is the case for you, contact me via Kickstarter and I can correct your email address in Backerkit and resend the pledge manager survey.

If you do not get your survey within 24 hours, feel free to reach out to inquire! Completing the survey will be required to get your stuff!

If you see any issues, feel free to reach out to me. I’ve done the Smoke Test which means 5% have already got the survey, and fixed the only issue I encountered there, but there could be some sneaky issue I missed.

The Poll will remain open for a few more days (let’s say 4/27 at least for the exact-date-demanders). So far the results have been interesting! No spoilers until it closes though.

As always, I’m available over on Discord if you have any questions.

All the best,

-Kibbles