A Year's End; A Year's Beginning
A recap of 2022, a peek behind the 2023 curtain, GUILD updates, and more!
Happy new year to all of our readers!
Yeah, I’m a couple days late, but I was having myself a vacation….
Anyway…We’re so glad to be starting a fresh year with a pile of new work to get done. I can’t wait to get to the details, as there’s a lot of them. But first…
Highlights of 2022
This past year was our first real year in the RPG space, and it was honestly, surprisingly successful! I started this official journey in August of 2021 with a few small projects published digitally on itch.io, within just two months we were in publishing contracts with Exalted Funeral for several of our games, and by May of 2022 we had 6 published books with EF!
Things started to slow down, as I began to be more interested in more focused work, and started to gain a deep and driving interest in the OSR, and more traditional, but lite game styles.
However, despite that, we ran our first crowdfunding campaign for The Dark in May/June, and it was a surprising and resounding success. We were actually blown away by the reception to it! We hit all of our goals, and then some—learned a baker’s dozen of lessons on that end too, but all valuable!
Our WYRD Framework really took off around then as well, and became the driving catalyst behind what I think is now going to be our primary publication—GUILD: Sword and Magick for Hire.
GUILD and the GUILD 2023 Roadmap!
GUILD crushed it on Kickstarter. We hit our single stretch goal, and are in final edits right now for all of the written material+layout. We’re extremely excited about it, and can’t wait to show you all the final product.
GUILD is now up on Backerkit, open for late-pledges and addons. So if you missed out on the campaign, or pledged at a digital or hardship level, you can make your updates there, or pledge now!
But I want to talk about the roadmap for GUILD this year, and all the cool stuff we have planned!
GUILD: Sword and Magick for Hire will be released to the general public in February, along with Issue #0 of the GUILD Adventure Diary, (this was the fulfilled stretch goal of our Kickstarter Campaign).
GUILD: Arms and Armor will be released in April. A full booklet of our in house weapons and armor using the structure provided in the core rule book.
GUILD: Monsters and Magicks will be released in May. Another full booklet of in house creations using the structures in the book.
GUILD: Travel and Survival Rules, are tentatively planned to be released during June—This is a project I’m going to spend some time on so it may be delayed longer than that.
GUILD Adventure Diary Issues #1A-5A will be released throughout the year. These will be full length adventures, each in their own books, and written by various authors including me. We’ve already got some adventure pitches in the pipeline, and I’ll tell you…they’re gonna be cool as hell!
All of these additional books will be available on our web-store, and will also be announced via this newsletter, so keep your ears/eyes/fingers/wallets prepared!
The OTHER 2023 Roadmap
Mothership Modules
We released Adrift off the Islets of Langerhans: Puck Sector/Sub-Sector Gloucester 299.1.112 211.221.888 7.310.43, as a PAX Unplugged Exclusive Ashcan this December, and we still have some left. There were only 69 made, and they’re signed and numbered.
Adrift…the full version will be finished, and ready for print in February. This will be more than just what the ashcan includes. Expanded encounter entries, and a full sector map, on which the entirety of our PUCK SECTOR Mothership Modules will be based. If you’ve already bought Adrift…don’t worry, it will be different. Not significantly enough to change a story, but there will be a healthy chunk of new material added, and sneak peaks at the future modules.
The Farm will be the first entry in the PUCK SECTOR Modules. Adrift…being the adventure the ties them all together, and introduces them all to the universe. This adventure will be focused on a suddenly quieted Agro-Ranch on a fungal moon.
The Battle of Alusz Phi will be an interesting adventure. Thrusting the players unwittingly, and unwillingly into a bloody war between corpos and freedom fighters in an ancient forest. The table will have the option to choose a side, and fulfill campaign objectives during their time here, or set out for their own goals.
PRML//ORGNZMZ will be a classic Botano-Zoological research facility adventure. Break in, destroy the fucked up shit that is being manufactured, and escape.
The Void Reactor of the Warship URIEL will be a very cool subterfuge and sabotage mission. The goal: infiltrate and steal the plans for the universe bending Void Reactor aboard the most powerful warship ever created, sabotaging the engine along the way.
The Quiet Room of Dr. Einard Pori is an adventure I’m personally extremely excited about. If you like Saw, and Cube, and other trap-horror movies…this one is for you.
The Leftovers is a tentative desert adventure. A crashed ship in a deserted wasteland. Silence all around. But deep below the surface, something quivers.
The Core of God —the culmination of all of our adventures. The secrets players discover throughout all of these, will be tied into this. No details to share, it’s a secret.
TROIKA! and Other Work
The Desert Sphere of the Great Mosaic, and the Temple of the Mosaic Daga
I’m about waist deep in this really cool book for TROIKA!, and I’m extremely hype to finish it. But it’s gonna take a while. This is planned to be a full setting, hexcrawl, and megadungeon, for TROIKA!, and it’s gonna explore some really dark, and heavy topics related to my personal life. So keep yourself prepared for that.
I’ve also got my first writing gig OUTSIDE of our own publications! I don’t think I’m allowed to share what that is yet, so…look for my name somewhere haha.
New Merch, T-Shirts, Patches Etc.
We’ve got T-Shirts up on Bonfire, you should go buy them! We’ll also be getting some embroidered patches with our slogan Punch Nazis/Roll Dice, as well as a bunch of new stickers and maybe even some buttons!
Check back regularly on our web-store to see what is new!
Things My friends are doing
You should already be following along with my buddy Gabe from Copper State Games. He wrote the intro adventure for GUILD (included in the core book) and has also done a few other really rad things. The Profane WYRD is fucking fantastic, and what Gabe is doing for 2023 is gonna fucking blow your mind. I’m not gonna spoil anything, I’ll let him speak for it. But you’re gonna be dead wasted, at how sick it is.
My buddy Thom from Dice Maven Games is working on quite a few projects for the WYRD Framework. They’re all really cool, and all will be published on our web-store.