Salutations & Happy New Year!
I hope your holidays were at best filled with rest, happiness, and time with your loved ones - and at worst, the commiseration of your droogie friends (including me, Drew, your droogie friend from the internet).
We’ve got a lot of news in here, but I’m going to try and keep it as concise as possible!
KICKSTARTER (ALMOST) FULFILLED
Thanks to Exalted Funeral, I believe most of our backers received their books by Christmas!
I have some backers I personally have left to fulfill, about 10 orders total, that I am getting done this week.
I have also sent out all the printful shirt orders, so expect those in the mail very soon!
HOWEVER, if you haven’t responded to my messages or emails concerning your shirt size and/or mailing address, I will be unable to fulfill your order until you do!
My Dear Sweet Mother
This past month, my family learned that my mother’s cancer has returned.
If you’ve read the credits in the rulebook, you know that she is the light of the world, and if you’ve ever met her, you know this experientially.
Her outlook is hopeful but we’re going to be heading into a real fight this year.
I will be taking care of her as we move into chemotherapy and other treatments, which will probably put a dent into my growing dog sitting business. As much as I try, I actually can’t be in two places at once.
As such, though I’ve been debating against it a WHOLE LOT, I have concluded that we will be bringing an offering to ZineQuest for this February, for nothing other than being able to alleviate some fiscal pressure on my bills, as well as having some kind of project to keep my brain busy.
ZineQuest 2024: Into the Dread of Cronus
The Dread of Cronus was a playtest of several interesting classes inside of what I’m calling an Inverted Mythic Fantasy setting.
We are taking Hesiod’s Theogony as a center point, bringing Hesiod’s work a step further, marrying other world mythologies into his grand drama, picking up the story right where everything goes awry - An Insidious Sequel.
Cronus has spent his jail time in Tartarus an impenitent slave to his tyrant paranoia, devouring all his siblings and progeny in exile with him, growing in divine strength and madness, warping him beyond recognition.
As he breaks the bounds of his hell, he returns to Gaea, usurping his son once again, devouring all bastard gods, reclaiming his throne.
Using his dominion over time and space, he warps reality into something truly inverted, creating a new mulched world ruled by his unholy Dread.
To his right hand he has summoned Tezcatlipoca, the Jaguar Sun, to reign as his vizier of the day; and to his left, the great Typhon, the Father of Monsters, to reign as the Moon - marking the end of the Age of Man, into the Age of Beasts.
Though all hope is lost, there still sing Muses and visions of wild bright horizons, hidden in the dreams of surviving mortals, speaking impossible futures - of Cronus’ undoing.
The Dread of Cronus will be our first “Parable of Initiation”, a series of offerings that are multi-system compatible.
This parable will feature The Epic of Dreams and Old School Essentials, containing original classes, spells, monsters, and dungeon adventures easily portable into either system.
The setting will allow for immediate porting of all the mythological content from The Epic of Dreams: Basilisk Edition into a context where none of it is “out of place” - a mythologists’ syncretic heaven.
This setting also features the metaphysical lore of The Epic of Dreams’ rules as setting lore!
You’ll see characters summoning the Circle of War, invoking the Muse, and other in-world nods to our new tradition.
In our first Dread of Cronus installment (working title “APOSTASIA”), we hope to feature the following classes:
Singer of Tales
Revenant
Manticore Knight
Ruin Survivor
Redwalker
Templar of Leviathan
Each class will work in both systems, featuring faction quests that need to be completed in order to gain the next ‘Title of Rank’, unlocking their new abilities.
Heroes in DoC will struggle to not succumb to the Dread, fighting warped monsters, driven by the ecstatic Dream, seeking the ancient truths buried in sunken temples of the old world, to try and defeat Cronus himself.
The best part is that we have the concepts and game content dialed in already from our Basilisk edition playtests. I'll have to pull out my notes and do a proper writeup, but we're not starting from zero. I’ll also be illustrating most if not all of it, and then it’ll need to be edited and laid out.
After I get everything wrapped up with mailing out the final pledges, I’ll be getting right to work on finalizing the text for this release, hopefully this week!
Expect this to go live later in February, or later on still if we miss it.
I’m not going to launch the Kickstarter until this is in layout - no mistakes repeated.
[Insert Content Here]
Before we got the news about my mom, I was working hard on generating content to get ahead of the official release of the Epic of Dreams, focusing on video shorts content.
That plan hasn’t changed, but we’re going to actually get back on the horse with blog content as well this year, with a cadence “to be determined.”
Making these short videos about the game has been a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see where everything goes. I’m also excited about being able to release free blog game content.
If you’re not a part of our substack yet, I highly recommend signing up!
The Cult Grows
We also had a pretty great turnout for our first gaming tour, in spite of everything else.
I learned a lot about the logistics of what it will take to make these gaming tours viable for me to do, as well as a ton about the value of social media marketing.
I’m not sure when the next tour will be, all family variables considering, but we’ll be making sure to sound the alarm when we do!
I’m also very thankful for my discord server cult fam this past year. Your support in our little chat group has really helped me get through all the highs and lows of 2023, and has kept me in this niche.
Into the Beyond
This is the part where I tell you more about our planned upcoming releases, but I don’t want to write more paragraphs, so here’s a bullet point list of hints and red herrings (see if you can figure out which is which…)
Prehistoric Kaiju Hunting
Hogwarts, but Cooler: The Zine
The World Without Skies??????
Gnostic Power Rangers
The Epic of Beans: Dictionary Edition
Biblical Tic-Tac-Toe!
Pan Debates the Senate
The Red Angel of Campbell & Anselm
Myths: In SPACE! Definitely not Spelljammer!
Even More Circles
State of the Drew
This past month has been a lot of hell for me, but I’m learning to not take everything so seriously. We only have one life, and there’s many things about the universe I don’t understand.
This past month was the first time I’ve seriously considered giving up on all of this, but I’ve decided instead to continue.
I’m trying to unlearn my habits of extreme productivity into cycles of anxious ADHD loops, and instead operate out of the strength of daily consistency.
I’ve said before that I want to release literature alongside our game content releases, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that with our new zine-focused model.
I’m going to start writing the epic poems now instead of continuing to delay working on them for the sake of another RPG thing. We’re going to work on both, little by little, side by side.
I’m excited to see where things will go now that I can finally monetize and market this project, but I’m not going to do what I did with this Kickstarter again, for my health.
We’ll bring the goods to market when they’re ready, whenever they’re ready.
The Most Crucial Bit Of All This… (You)
Thank you so much for your trust and attention to this project.
I know it’s taken so long, and you’ve probably lost trust in me as a creator, which is absolutely understandable.
I hope what you’ve received was worth the wait, and if you haven’t received your books yet, please send me a message so I can make sure you do.
I hope you have a great year this year, in spite of all the wild variables that are ultimately outside of our individual control.
May this year be your new year of peace.
Hit me up if you have any questions, as always