It’s December, it’s wet, windy and I’m all too ready to wind down for the end of the year. This is a mid-month catch up as I needed some time to recover post Dragonmeet. I’ll also be skipping January as I’m travelling for work so we’ll be well into the new year before the next email.
For those of you that attended Dragonmeet I hope you had a fantastic time - as a vendor I get to see a very different side of the event but as with 2022 it was a fantastic experience. Sharing with Nick of Ickbat Games was great and I honestly don't know how I ran a stall on my own last year. I've posted two roundups of the event over on the blog. The first focuses purely on sales and income (spoiler alert: I made a loss but that's ok!) while the second breaks down my thoughts on the event. I can say with confidence that I intend to attend again as a trader next year and eagerly await the news of where the event will be held in 2024!
Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound - The print edition is here!
And it looks amazing!
After almost a year of work it felt fantastic to finally ship these out to backers at the start of the month, just in time for it to go on sale at Dragonmeet. As I continue to develop the Dyson Eclipse my aim is to make Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound a central pillar of the setting that builds a home base for the characters undertaking the big adventures that are typical in many space opera stories.
Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound will be available for general purchase in the new year and I’ll be posting an in depth dive in a future newsletter.
What's Next?
The short answer to that is I dont know! ZineQuest is rapidly approaching but I've made the decision that I will be skipping it in 2024 to focus on development work. While I am proud of Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound it proved to be a more challenging project than I had anticipated and I want to revise how I approach creative work next year. This is only a hobby for me and I want to avoid making it a job on top of my existing full time job. During 2024 I'm therefore going to focus on some smaller releases and the development of a few ideas that have been bouncing around in my head. Top of my list right now are
Untitled duet spy game
A continuation of numb3r stations that introduces a second player in the form of a handler, with messages passed back and forth as the spy undertakes a series of missions. Mechanically I'm hoping to combine ideas from Numb3r Stations with elements from Signal to Noise to provide an asymmetrical play experience about espionage, trust and the human cost of spying. I also need to find a name for it as the obvious one (Dead Drop) is already taken!
Red Roots of the Rose
A mythos adventure that has been on my to do list for far too long. I'm currently running a regular Call of Cthulhu game so my aim is to do additional playtesting of the adventure and finally write it up. I've yet to decide if I will do a generic, systemless version or write it for the Call of Cthulhu community content program. I might even do both.
Big Blue Fish
Another short sci-fi adventure for down on their luck crews in a similar vein to The Kandhara Contraband based on a job I ran in a Serenity campaign many years ago. Inspired by the approach that Chris Bissette is taking with A Dungeon Game I want to see if I can pair this with my own lightweight sci-fi system that I can give away for free when somebody buys an adventure.
The Wrap Up
As with every year it feels like 2023 has been a busy one while simultaneously feeling like I've not achieved everything I wanted to. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels like this. Despite that I'm proud of what I've achieved over the past twelve months and it's been fantastic to see more people discover my work.
I'll be publishing a full year in review on the blog in January, including my usual breakdown of sales. Until then stay safe, have a merry Christmas if you celebrate it and happy new year.
Craig