Road to Kickstarter: Update #4

Road to Kickstarter: Update #4

Road to Kickstarter #04: What is Gertrude?

Greetings Heroes,

Welcome back to another installment of the Road to Kickstarter Newsletter series! This week, Ryan dives into exciting new lore around the high-tech H.O.P.P.E.R. device, while giving us more insight into it’s relationship with the Gertrude story’s various dimensions (AKA “otherworlds”). On the product side, Nick & Kyle explain some of the major functional differences between Gertude and The Hero’s Journal, while John tries his best to keep this weekly blog on schedule!

Ryan, Art


In the planner, Yew travels through dimensions (or “otherworlds”) using a state-of-the-art wrist-mounted device invented by Professor Mentor called the H.O.P.P.E.R. (Holographic Otherworld Portal Projector for Exploration & Research, naturally.) All Yew has to do is punch in coordinates using a set of unusual glyphs, hit the button, and a portal opens up to a parallel world!

However, on the maiden voyage of the device, the forces of Chaos send Shadows to sabotage Yew. They steal the glyphs for Yew’s home dimension and hide them in difficult places across the multiverse. Luckily, one little Shadow, the Shadow Buddy, takes pity on Yew and gets them to safety just in time. From there, Yew and the Shadow Buddy are forced to explore new worlds, facing their dangers and challenges to recover the glyphs hidden by Shadows so that Yew can finally go home.

The glyphs are hidden in objects in these otherworlds. Every time Yew and Shadow Buddy recover a glyph, that object gets sent back to Professor Mentor’s lab with the H.O.P.P.E.R. device. Now, before you start asking “why doesn’t Yew just send themselves back to the lab that way?” It’s because the damaged H.O.P.P.E.R. portals are unstable and dangerous. Also, it would be a very short adventure.

 Kyle & Nick, Operations / Product 


“What is the difference between The Hero’s Journal & The Planner?”

A lot of people have asked, since we started this series, how this product is different from The Hero’s Journal. So this week, we want to dive in on why we are making a planner vs a new iteration of the journal, and what things it can offer that a journal can’t. (we made a comparison chart below.)

First off, The Hero’s Journal is designed to help motivate you to accomplish your goals by posturing those goals as your own personal quest. The planner is meant to help you corral the chaos of day to day events. We added planning elements to The Hero’s Journal initially because we know that planning is a large part of accomplishing goals, but planning your life not only requires an understanding of what the day holds, but it also takes knowing what your weeks, months, and year looks like. In short, The Hero’s Journal is for making your goal feel more heroic and the planner is for taming the chaos of the day to day.

These questions help us a ton. Thank you to Mary for your comment on the Road to Kickstarter blog from last week. In the coming weeks, we will continue to tackle the questions you all have for us as we get closer to the campaign.

John, Community


I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who voted in our feedback poll last week! Your opinions and suggestions are greatly valued, and the team has been hard at work this week carefully collating the 100+ responses to ensure that we can hone in on the optimal balance for hero preferences. Keep your eyes peeled for more feedback opportunities around things like product add-ons, stretch goals, and more coming soon as we get closer to the Kickstarter launch date.

In the meantime, our digital early access community The Hero’s Guild continues to grow, officially breaking over 200 subscribed heroes this week. We celebrated by releasing our 2nd official “Hero’s Guild Exclusive” planner setting: Super Game Quest (a video game themed otherworld). As a member of The Guild, not only do you get digital early access to all the Gertrude planner spreads, but you’re also going to get access to 4 settings throughout the year that will remain exclusive to Hero’s Guild subscribers.

Not able to subscribe to The Guild right now? Worry not. Starting in a couple weeks we’ll be dedicating this blog space to unveiling a little bit more about each of Gertrude’s 12 otherworlds week-to-week, as well as providing 1 free sample page for each of the settings to test out. Until we have more info to share on that, stay tuned, and stay magical! 🪄✨


13 comments


  • Heidi

    Agree with Nicole.


  • Nicole

    Suggestion: A stitched, lay flat binding would be so much better than rings. You lose so much space trying to write in a ringed/coiled planner. I avoid them for that reason- it is so hard to write in them when your hands a bumping up against the rings all the time.


  • Gretchen

    I am so excited to see your code name for the planner is Gertrude!!! Absolutely one of my favorite names ever (I told everyone to call me Gertrude for a while when I was a kid – because Gretchen was just to boring I guess? 😂😂😂) And my patron Saint is Gertrude the Great! So excited to learn more about “Gertrude the Planner”…. You guys keep making life a little bit more fun with each new idea… thank you!!


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