A guy with a chef hat on?

It's Tim Cain - the pic is from the Project Eternity Kickstarter page under the "Rewards" section...

EDIT: Ah, it's from the new update:

Adam Brennecke is doing a Icewind Dale II livestream right now:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/project-eternity-live-stream/theater

So computer gaming was "niche" in 1998, but Baldur's Gate was "mainstream"? Seriously that makes no sense at all.

If computer gaming was niche in 1998, then Baldur's Gate is/was niche too. Same with Starcraft and Half-Life.

...also, 60,000 backers = Endless Paths dungeon now has 8 levels.

Not far from $3,000,000 now. If pledges continue at the pace set in the past few days, $3,500,000 could well happen :D

If I may suggest a name for Tim's book: How to Serve Man.

It's a cookbook! A cookbook! O_o

So with regards to international shipping, does that mean across the board, or you only add international shipping if you're not in the US?

Exactly. They were as mainstream as any could be, which wasn't very.

Outside US/Canada, I believe.

So with regards to that I just put the base amount and don't need to add international shipping? (I want to be sure, money is tight, my apologies)

Edit: Holy crap how many different accounts do I have to make for this.

Watch the Feargus Live, right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2xzEmQPzxY&feature=youtu.be
EDIT: He's gone now.

I kinda agree with you. Mainstream IMHO is when a game is broadened to appeal to the general masses on multiple platforms.

On the rewards tiers side, anyone think they are trying to offer too many options? (yes crazy to say but...)

over $3mil with paypal

Today's Q&A session:

Question: will we have a narrator in the game?
Feargus: I don't know yet. That will depend on how the guys want to tell the story. If I had to guess though - I bet we will have one at least for Act/Chapter breaks.

Question: Can you confirm that we now have a stronghold?
Feargus: We have a stronghold!!! Once we get to 3.0M on Kickstarter we will update all the graphics. We got a fair amount of criticism that we said we hit $2.6M, but it did not say that on Kickstarter.

Question: The Mega-dungeon picture needs to be updated as well. We're at 8 levels now including the 20K FB likes.
Feargus: Rob is going to be working on that right now. Should have it updated before the end of the day.

Question: how about another screenshot before the ending of the kickstart to boost the morale of the backers?
Feargus: We have something fun planned for Tuesday morning - not a new screenshot so much as something about the current screenshot.

Question: About the 750 tier I am assuming that that Portrait only applies to that tier and not to the tiers above it? I heard that the writing for those 1000 and above was not true. Could you clarify that?
Feargus: The troll picture is at the $750. We are talking about also throwing in at $5k + and having and add-on for between $750 and $5K. We probably made everything too complicated. :)

Question: Would releasing a small one hour prologue to introduce the world in 2013 be a stretch goal you would consider? Something to get people familiar with the world and character building early. You seemed to be open to the idea a while back...
Feargus: I don't think so. My reasoning is that I want to put all of our effort into the final game and finalling the game twice ( or a portion of it ) takes resources and time.

Question: So guys, really quick, what exactly is the Campaign Almanac?
Feargus: Compared to the Collector's Book, the Campaign Almanac is an in depth description of the game world of KE with a lot of lore, history, timelines and detail. It is intended as a great read or even as a sourcebook for someone who might want to run a PnP game in the world of PE. It does not have a rule system in it, but we are thinking about creating some PnP PE books that would accompany it (after the KS).

Question: Will there be any more rewards tiers or add ons added before the end?
Feargus: We have plans for a few more things, but not a ton - we don't want things to get too confusing.

Question: Is there an official answer on whether we will be able to download multiple operating system versions of the game with one purchase, or do we have to buy twice in order to download a copy for Windows and a copy for Linux? I use two operating systems.
Feargus: I am not totally sure, just yet - sorry.

Question: That's not the answer I was hoping for, but at least it's an answer. :P Thanks. At least not knowing means there is hope for a yes. Using Unity, I have no idea how much work is involved with porting to Linux and Mac. Several other projects have allowed multi-OS downloads, but those are probably smaller in scope than PE.
Feargus: Our goal is to not make you have to pay for extra versions to play yourself - maybe that is a better answer. What I'm not sure about right now, is how we can do that across all versions. Just yet.

Question: Big feature for me: Windowed mode. I often work on my computer, doing consulting and other tasks. Games that don't offer me windowed mode just don't get played as often as I'd like. And from what I'm seeing so far, I really want to play this one. Feedback, Obsidian?
Feargus: If we make games without a window mode our programmers cry. I don't like crying programmers. :)

Question: besides working on your first own IP, do you plan something special to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Obsidian next year ?
Feargus: That is a good question. At the very least a big party. Other than that, we want to come up with some special Obsidian-wear and other stuff for our employees and maybe make some of that available in our store (which will hopefully be up by then - if it's not then Darren is a slacker).

Question: I emailed Obsidian through Kickstarter to suggest the Humble Store as one distribution method. I don't know if you are the one that reads those or not. Humble Store is perfectly suited to providing Windows, Mac and Linux versions to a customer DRM free. They can also provide all the extra downloads like the strategy guide, almanac, etc. I have a few purchases that are supplied by them, and it works.
Feargus: Got the message, sorry about not responding. It's on the list of things we are going to look into after KS. A lot of people have suggested that, so we will follow up on it seriously.

Question: Would you consider "cutting out the middleman" and just self-distributing from your own store in the future. Or would you stick to KS for the visibility?
Feargus: We are going to be setting up our own store and looking at what are all the things we can distribute that way. I'm not sure how crazy we are going to get there though, since we still want to be a developer first and a publisher second.

Question: can we get a small write up about Rangers Druids and Monks as we have for every other class.
Feargus: I'll put that on the list. Also, Josh will be on the AMA on reddit Monday morning at 10AM PST - you could ask for some more detail there as well.

Question: About the inventory will it be displayed paper dolls with item slots? and how many item slots will there be? only the standard ones like helmet , hands etc.. or also trinkets necklaces.. rings?
Feargus: Sorry about not answering earlier - I really needed to get going. Inventory will most likely be 3D paper dolls showing the changes to your character with the equipped items. I am pretty sure that we are going to be doing rings, necklaces and some other trinkets as well. While those will go in the slots, I don't believe they will show up on the 3D model / paper doll.

Question: Do you see how many people have the project starred? How about starred but not pledged? Do you see the pledges each person has made?
Feargus: We do not get (at least I don't think so) a list of who has starred the project.

Question: how vast will be the interaction with the objects in the world/ houses?
Feargus: Interaction will most likely be limited to what we call interactables. Things like chests, doors, puzzle elements, corpses, book cases (and all types of containers). Our system does allow anything that you see in the environment to be interacted with if it needs to be a part of a puzzle or quest though. We will also have examinables - objects that you can click on to get information and lore. [probably a lot of them]

Question: I just realised that the famous awesome screenshot is actually in the PE Kickstarter video that has been up since the beginning (at 4:05)... Um... sneaky?
Feargus: Yep we are sneaky. :)

Question: Will Alt or tab be used to help light up items and things to pick up?
Feargus: Absolutely on the Alt key - I loved that option in the IE games, particularly after we did that cool blue/purple shading in Torment.

Thanks again for that. Someone asked about HumbleBundle again. Gosh...someone really loves them dont they? Yet again someone asks about paying once and getting copies on each OS. (wondering if its the same people asking both things) They will be setting up their own store. Might be tempting to get it directly through them if Gog doesn't come through...

60,528
backers
$2,954,354
pledged of $1,100,000 goal
70
hours to go