State of the Institute | Update #1

Attention Institute Staff!

It’s been about a month and a half since we launched our Patreon page and we’re happy to report that it seems we’ve developed an efficient routine for both fulfilling our pledge rewards and for producing the new shows and episodes that you’ve helped make happen. But that’s just the start! Now that we’re confident in the stability of our foundation, we can begin building up to new and exciting things. So, in the first of what will most likely be a series of Patron-exclusive updates, we’d like to fill you in on our plans for the next few months.

We first hinted at this during our launch stream, but now we can finally provide a few more details. Starting in late April/early May, the Templin Institute will begin a roleplay-heavy playthrough of Stellaris with the signature Templin twist.

We’ve come up with four unique nations, each a variation of future humanity with its own national identity, goals, and ideology. As soon as we announce Stellaris Invicta, our patrons will be able to vote on which nation we’ll be playing as. From then on, each week during Grand Strategy Saturdays, we’ll livestream our progress on our Twitch Channel and upload the recordings to the Templin Archives for anyone who missed it.

But that’s only half of it. In addition to these livestreams, the Templin Institute will create a new mini-series chronicling the rise, and perhaps fall, of whichever nation we end up playing as. Using both in-game footage and third-party artwork, the series will be produced in the same style as our regular episodes detailing the events of our Stellaris game. Whatever happens in game will be forever enshrined in the lore of our nation.

We’ll be naming scientists, admirals, ships, and maybe even planets after our patrons and Twitch viewers, so be sure to tune in once the action starts. Expect an announcement video and a rundown of each nation before the end of the month. Until then, here is a teaser.

Your choices for Stellaris Invicta.

Thanks to your incredible support, the Templin Institute will be releasing a second week of pilots! Just as with our initial round back in February, we’ll be releasing four new shows day by day and all our patrons will get to cast their vote on which one becomes a recurring series. We’re bringing back two ideas from the last round that didn’t make the cut alongside two other brand-new pilots, so hopefully it will be just as difficult to choose this time around. We expect Pilot Week #2 to occur towards the end of May and we’ll be making another announcement video as soon as we’re good to go. 

Apparently, people really like the Templin logo, so much so, that we’ve received numerous requests for Templin branded profile pictures for use on Youtube, Twitch, Discord, or wherever else. So, starting right now, each month we’ll be releasing a collection of Templin themed pics intended for use on the social media platform of your choice. 

Eventually we’ll make the entire collection available on Google Drive or somewhere else, but for now, you can find them all as attachments to this post. 

The rapid expansion of both our Twitch Channel and Discord Server has been amazing to see. Events like Grand Strategy Saturdays and Wildcard Wednesdays have been a ton of fun and if recent Incoming episodes like “Megacorporations Make Poor Governments” have proven anything, it’s that you have just as much to say about Worldbuilding as we do. The Discord server has been a flurry of activity these past few days and its been fun to be part of.

The natural next step is to work on our community involvement. In the past we’ve streamed a few community matches of Wargame: Red Dragon & Star Wars: Empire at War, but our goal moving forward is to make these a much more regular occurrence.

In Conclusion…

It was very important to us that before we expanded into new areas we made absolutely sure that the Templin Institute was on firm footing. We have ambitious plans for the Institute, but these ideas should never interfere with the quality and consistency of the content you’ve come to expect from us. We hope you’ve enjoyed being part of the Templin Institute, but remember, this is just the beginning!