It's November and it's all go here as Dragonmeet approaches all too quickly. Before I dive into what I've been up to I want to say a big congratulations to Jean-Laurent and the team over at Didaskalie for a successful campaign - thanks to their hard work Vers le Silence met its goal so next year I'll get to see my games translated to French and reach a brand new market. It's a position that I honestly never imagined being in when I started out as a designer and I can't wait to see the final product.
October also saw my games on sale at MCM comic con for the first time as part of the Tabletop Industry Network stall so I want to say thanks to Michael and the team for inviting me to be a part of that. One of the biggest struggles many designers face is simply getting their games in front of an audience so this was a great opportunity and it's fantastic to see UK based designers come together and support one another in this way. Having now contributed to a couple of stalls I'm aiming to put together a summary of sales and costs in the new year to compare Tabletop Scotland, MCM and Dragonmeet. I think it's important to share that data while it will also help me to develop my plans for next year.
Design Diary: Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound
With work on Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound nearing completion I wanted to share a preview of the game now that backers have seen the draft layout. The game is inspired by Becky Chambers novel Record of a Spaceborn Few and is designed to tell slice of life stories set within the vast habitats of the Dyson Eclipse (though it can easily be shifted to other sci-fi settings). It draws mechanical inspiration from Gregor Hutton’s cyberpunk game Remember Tomorrow, a lightweight and narrative game that set out to tell Gibsonesque stories where characters fade in and out of the story as they achieve their individual goals.
The game plays out over a series of individual scenes, with each player taking on the role of GM and choosing a PC to place at the centre of the scene. Challenging the PCs are Factions and Situations. Factions represent larger groups of people, including corporations, criminal enterprises or simply a collective of like minded individuals. Situations are abstract challenges and include things such as gravity storms, political unrest or out of control Builder AIs. Situations will often act indirectly, with the story focusing on their day to day impact rather than asking the PCs to resolve potentially life threatening events.
As play continues characters will come and go as they strive to achieve their Dream and resolve the Problem that has been holding them back. They will gain relationships and conditions, both positive and negative, that will affect the direction of their lives and help them to tick off their three attributes - Hope, Fear & Drive.
Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound shines during Anthology Play, when the story is interweaved with a more traditional, action oriented narrative. This provides the opportunity to showcase how world changing events may affect the everyday lives of Tau Ceti’s ordinary citizens and expand the Dyson Eclipse into a lived in setting.
Backers will be receiving digital and print rewards from the ZineQuest campaign later this month before it goes on sale at Dragonmeet in December.
New Release: The Dusk Bringers
Not content with just the one new release for Dragonmeet I am also pleased to announce an expanded edition of The Dusk Bringers, a short adventure for fantasy games. The adventure starts opens with a call for aid from a small tribe of goblins before building to explore the secrets of the Dusk Bringers, a heretical cult that once threatened the Church of the Sun. The adventure is system agnostic and compatible with D&D 5e.
I will have copies of The Dusk Bringers on the stall at Dragonmeet while the digital edition is available now on itch.io, with a special newsletter discount of 40% off for the rest of the month. Why? Because I recently celebrated my 40th birthday so it felt like a nice little discount as a thank you for subscribing.
The Roundup
This month I want to leave you with a couple of links that I think are worth checking out.
First up we have an exploration of a 20th century ringworld. We take a lot of concepts for granted and assume that they would be understood by society at a similar developmental stage but would that be the case on an artificial world? Would we even have the same understanding of how gravity works? Given the inclusion of megastructures in the Dyson Eclipse it's probably not surprising that these are questions I find really compelling.
Back on Earth the BBCs Lovecraft Investigations podcast returns with season 4 - The Haunter of the Dark. I absolutely love this series and the way that it has adapted the original stories for both a modern audience and the podcast within a podcast format. If you're into mythos stories and haven't listened to it then I'd highly recommend you do, starting with season 1 The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Over on the blog I wrote a short review of some mystery dice packs I was sent by Mystery Dice Goblins.
All going well next months newsletter will come to you with a post-Dragonmeet roundup. If you’re going to be at the convention please come by and say hello, I’ll be on stand G8 in the lower trade hall selling a range of zines, positioned between the Colostle and EN Publishing stands. If you're wondering where that is then check out this awesome map that has been commissioned for the convention:
That's all for now. As always stay safe,
Craig