Merch Reminder, Art, Press Kit and More!
over 3 years ago – Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 11:44:15 PM

It's still the month of Grasping here—the leaves have fallen fully from the trees and the air has taken on this almost supernaturally clear quality. Myself and my pod are bunkering down for a long and cold winter, but we have plans to make that time pass as gracefully as it can, and to get a ton of work done on Wanderhome while we're at it.

Timeline Update

As art comes together and our work on this project continues, we find ourselves shooting for a late March release date. This is not final, as delays in production can absolutely cause problems along the way, but we hope to get it to you several months ahead of our original June 2021 goal.

BackerKit Merch

Reminder that the merchandise available on Backerkit (i.e wall scrolls, t-shirts, pins, patches, and stickers) are going to be unavailable starting December 15th. If you want them, you'll have to add them to your survey before then. While we do have plans to open a Threadless with more merchandise options, this is going to be your only chance to buy screenprinted t-shirts or the beautiful wall scrolls.

Also, please fill out your surveys. There's only a few hundred of you left, and I want to make sure everyone has the chance to access the add-ons store. 

Speaking of wall scrolls, we've been working with Conner Fawcett on their design. Here's another sneak peek at what's been going on behind the scenes.

This art is going to be inside the book, and also in the limited edition wall scroll available on Backerkit now!

Press

Hello to our lovely journalist friends! Now that we have a slightly more finalized release date, we're looking into supporting journalists and writers who want to create articles and content about Wanderhome. To that end, if you are a journalist or writer who wants to review or talk about Wanderhome, please reach out to us at [email protected]. Also, we still have a resource kit available to podcasters, and we plan to continue that support as the book is released. While we can't promise we can support everyone, we want to provide resources to any news outlets or podcasts who want to cover the game as it is released. We want to support the entire RPG ecosystem, which includes all of you.

Call To Action

In many parts of the world (my home in New York included) this time period is one of the roughest for unhoused and homeless people. It's always a good idea to donate to your local homeless shelter or community center, but I cannot understate the importance of lending your support now. Wanderhome is a game about seeking a home in a world where you can always find a bed to sleep on and a hot meal wherever you go. We should strive to emulate that in the world we live in today.

Seeya Soon

Take care everyone! We'll be slow to respond over the next week or so, but please feel free to reach out to us—either here, at our email, or on Twitter (Jay, Ruby, Possum Creek Games). Hopefully next time you hear from us we'll be announcing our new website!

Assorted November Updates
over 3 years ago – Fri, Nov 06, 2020 at 02:51:59 AM

Hi everyone, it's Jay!

The month of Firetop is just ending, and Grasping is beginning. Around here, Grasping lasts for a while—it is cold and barren, with cruel tree branches and a too-crisp early evening sky. It's finally too cold to sit outside, and so me and Ruby have taken shelter in our office. But there are still vestiges of stunningly bright trees along out creek, and the view is inspiring. This is a sorta small update, with information about BackerKit merchandise, where we are in the production, and some new art. 

Backerkit

First of all, please please please fill out your Backerkit survey! If you misplaced it, go here and put in your Kickstarter email. We are at 90% completed, and I want to make sure I can get everything to all the backers. Even if you only got a PDF, still fill it out—it'll help me stop pulling my hair out of my head, at least.

Additionally, we're going to be closing all merchandise orders on December 15. We'll still be selling copies of the book itself, but we need to lock in numbers for our manufacturers and for our budget. If you haven't bought any of our wonderful merchandise (including pins, postcards, t-shirts, patches, and more) you have a little more than 30 days to grab them! If you've already locked in your survey, you can still go back and edit it to add stuff. We've tossed in a couple really great things you can add to your order, including copies of my other game Sleepaway. 

Once we close orders, you'll still be able to change your address.

Progress on the Book

Last week I sent the final, finished manuscript over to my amazing editor, Kazumi. They and I have been chatting a bunch about intentions and goals of the text, trying to make everything as solid and firm as possible. There's a lot of revisions ahead of us but I'm already so thrilled with the feedback I've gotten and the work being done. Having an editor is an irreplaceable blessing, and I beg you to never go into your next project without one. As a published poet and Kundiman fellow, Kaz doesn't just know game design—they're also an accomplished writer of more traditional work, and their experience with academia and poetry heavily inform the perspective they bring to Wanderhome. 

Kazumi also just released an awesome game — Reverie, a decolonial reimagining of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons about a misfit group of strange travelers (including a child haunted by darkness, a talking crow, and the fallen moon) as they search through a mysterious and mist-filled world.

Art

As is tradition, I'd like to wrap up this post with some of the new art we're getting in! We're trying to get everything together this month, and our artists are producing some truly amazing designs that are going to fill Wanderhome cover-to-cover with beautiful imagery. Check out some of the stuff below and be inspired!

Stay in Touch

Constant reminder that you can follow me and Ruby on Twitter, and you can follow Possum Creek Games on Twitter, Itch.io, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also support us on Patreon, and through that get access to our Discord server. 

Also, tonight at 7 PM EST I'll be on a panel about GMless games hosted by Metatopia! AC of Indie Press Revolutions, Viditya Voleti and myself will be talking about GMless design, and I'll be thinking a bunch about Wanderhome there. You can watch the panel here, and catch a ton of other great stuff all week. 

That's all for now, take care and stay safe! I'll see you next when the first snow falls, and the Candlefeast begins.

—Jay

Assorted Small Updates
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 17, 2020 at 02:47:25 AM

Hi everyone, sorry for the two updates so quickly back to back. October (aka Firetop) is a busy month for Wanderhome as Ruby moves upstate and we get our office all set up. This means we've gotten to move ahead with a bunch of stuff pretty fast, and I figured I'd give you updates!

Backerkit Updates and FAQ

80% of you have filled out your Backerkit survey! Great work, all of you. For the one thousand people who haven't, please do so as soon as you can. If you misplaced your survey, you can request a new one here. Don't forget to snag merchandise and let your friends know they can preorder there if they want. The more preorders the better!

Per request, we've added copies of Sleepaway to the Wanderhome preorder page. Sleepaway is my previous Kickstarter, a queer horror RPG built on a similar system to Wanderhome, about a group of summer camp counselors protecting their kids from the monstrous Lindworm. If you've been meaning to pick it up but haven't had the chance to, now you can! If you want to get it before Wanderhome ships, you can also buy it right now on Indie Press Revolution. 

Finally, a lot of you have been asking about how long the survey will remain open. We won't close anything without 30 days warning, but a lot of when we close depends on schedule. There are some products we'll be closing early (the wall scrolls, for example) so we can lock in numbers for our printing company, but we're going to try to leave as many things open as long as we can. Once we lock in orders, you'll still be able to change your shipping address, but I would really appreciate it if you filled out the Backerkit survey before then! 

Plugs And Promotions

October is a really amazing month for Kickstarters, and there's a few I'm especially excited for I figured I'd post about here!

Articles of the Arcana: A Troika Tarot Guide is a beautiful technicolor expansion to the other world's favorite RPG, Troika! It has lavish art, a tarot deck, and a bunch of really cool concepts. Matthew Gravelyn is the designer behind Humblewood, and the expansion is absolutely gorgeous and incredible. And if you don't have Troika! already, you can pick up a PDF copy of it here! It's also only halfway to its goal, so go show it some love.

Mud: A Golem Memoir is a solo RPG about being a golem, as a metaphor for marginalization and body dysphoria. It's one part Jewish folktale, and one part game you can play and embody. It's really queer and interesting, and I'm super excited to get my hands on it and try it out. 

Spindlewheel is the most anticipated system in my circles, and for very good reason. It's an oracular deck designed for RPGs, with incredibly evocative designs and interpretive guides printed onto the cards. It's been in design for more than a year, and every single game I've played with my little hand-cut deck has been incredible. I can't want to actually hold it in my hands and incorporate it into every single game I play.

If you've been online at all, you've probably seen the hype around Thirsty Sword Lesbians, an RPG about being gay and getting in homoerotic swordfights with your equally gay nemeses. It's really good. I don't have a lot to say about it beyond that. It's very good.

[untitled 1] is my newest RPG on my Patreon, about a group of queer teenagers locked in warfare against the wolves. It's very sad and weird and intense, but if you're looking for queer melancholy and trauma, look no further. I release games on my Patreon with some frequency, and also have a very active Discord server on there - so feel free to back it and hop on in to get more updates and more games!

General Wanderhome Updates

I just (literally 15 minutes ago) sent the completed copy of Wanderhome to Kazumi. They've promised a whole Queer Eyes esque makeover for my lumpy darling, and I'm so excited for the text to really come to life in their hands. 

Art continues to trickle in over time. I just had some awesome meetings with some of our artists to lock down stretch goal pieces and get some new things to really fill the book out. The part I've been most excited for are Letty's sketches. They've been pulling together some amazing playbook illustrations, including the Caretaker and the Exile (included below). The wheelchair was designed with consultation with one of my disabled friends, and I love the work done to blend modern day wheelchair practicalities with strange fantastical elements.

Catch you all later, as the long project continues and we enter into the dreary month of Grasping. 

- Jay

Backerkit Surveys Rolling Out
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 10:23:48 PM

Hi everyone!

This is a pretty short update - I just clicked launch for the smoke test, and we'll be rolling out waves of BackerKit surveys over the weekend. Let me know if there's any issues, either be requesting support, commenting here, or sending an email to possumcreekgames(@)gmail.com. Once there, there will be a ton of different options - merchandise, wall scrolls, extra books, and more. A couple assorted notes for everyone:

• International merchants now also have free shipping! A little gift from me to you! All merchants can also pick up extra copies of books and PDFs at discounted prices, so if you want to grab more you can. 
• If you went onto the pre-order store and snagged stuff before you got your survey, that's okay - there should be a way to merge both of those. I'm not sure what it is, but BackerKit can help. 
• There's no Ragamuffin Tier PDFs available, but there is a $10 option to donate a PDF to someone else (making it available as a community copy once the final book is released). 

That's all on the BackerKit front! If you don't get your survey in the next week or so, send me a message and I'll figure out what happened.

--

Also, as always, we stand with our marginalized siblings and comrades in the face of an increasingly uncertain world. I keep coming back to a concept in Wanderhome, the idea that people are fundamentally good - and it is power that corrupts. The belief that you know better, are better, than the people around you. That you're more important, be that through the divine right of kings, the acquisition of capital, or through heroic destiny. That fascism is a cult of personality based around the exaltation of the great hero. 

I don't care about heroes, about their lives and their deaths, beyond how their cruelty hurts the people I love.

Please continue to support your communities. Check up on your isolated friends. Donate what you can to your local mutual aid networks and support centers. I cannot express how hopeful and scary and nervewracking and heartwrenching it is to make a game about recovering from trauma in the midst of a world that is being actively traumatized. There's almost 7,000 of you who get these emails. I will keep crying out until I'm hoarse to remind you to love each other, to care for each other, to stand up for each other. That Wanderhome is a fantasy but I hope it can also be a reminder and perhaps even a blueprint for the radical and rebellious act of care in a world that wants to keep you alienated.

Someday this age of power and subjugation will end, and when it does we need to be ready to hold each other close and learn to heal again.

That's all for now. I'll see you when the leaves fall.

Jay

Firetop Update: A Busy Month
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 04:22:21 AM

Hey everyone, Jay here.

The yellow leaves floating in my creek tell me that we are firmly in the season of Silt, and that the month of Firetop is well underway. This is just a small update letting you all know what's going on right now and what's next. 

Before I get to any of that, some of you commented asking about surveys. Don't worry, you haven't missed anything! Right before this update I requested a review from BackerKit, and once they give it the go-ahead we'll send out smoke tests and launch things properly. We also actively have our pre-order store up, if you have any friends who missed out on the Kickstarter.

What We've Been Up To

While I've been pretty quiet over here on Kickstarter, the past few weeks has been outrageously busy for me. After my mandatory enforced staycation and Ruby's beautiful feast, I had to leap back into things with setting up Possum Creek Games as a company, handling finances, storefronts, and so so much paperwork. It turns out having to rapidly expand your financial infrastructure is a ton of work! Who knew! Most of that is really boring for all of you (hooray, I have a Stripe Account now, riveting) but the two main exciting bits are:

• Ruby will be working for Possum Creek Games full time! That means she'll be able to apply her expert layout skills to all my other projects, and even the stuff we don't Kickstart will get some amazing visual treatments. She'll also be moving upstate for a little bit and working with me in our (hopefully very cozy) home office space.
• We'll have a website up soon! We're still not sure when, but we're working our butts off to set it up and get the storefront operational. I plan on having some of my older projects up too, with redone layout by Ruby.

On the Wanderhome-specific front, it's been mostly quiet. I printed the full manuscript out and went through with a red pen to tighten up a bunch of the lists and figure out how I want to make the game even more airtight design-wise. One of our big priorities at Possum Creek Games (and with Wanderhome specifically) is to make sure our games are accessible to people new to RPGs, and to that end we'll be doing a lot of editing passes in order to make sure everything is as easy to follow as possible.

Final art has also been trickling in from our artists (pictures at the end!) and it's so amazing. Oh my god.

Plugs

While I'm not filling out paperwork and navigate the byzantine architecture of QuickBooks, I've been working on games and playing a lot of Among Us on my Discord. If you want to see what I'm working on, get early/exclusive access to new games, hang out with a wonderful community of people, make a lot of worm on a string jokes, and play Among Us with me, please back our Patreon! Even $1/month is enormous for us, and the more we can take in through Patreon the more we can ensure Possum Creek Games is a sustainable business. 

I also have a few games I'm going to be releasing on my Patreon in the next month or two! I have a lot of wonderful plans, and I'm so hyped for all of you to be a part of them.

Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants is up on Kickstarter now! It's an anti-capitalist vampire-hunting RPG set in a castlepunk dystopia. "Mask up. Spill Blood. Drink the Rich." It's a hotly-anticipated game with an amazing team of people and an incredible premise. In 2020 there's nothing I want more than to be given a mask of raw power by the mysterious fae of the deep forest and go murder some vampires, drinking their blood and overthrowing their colonialist government. So it's nice to have a game that can replicate that emotional experience for me!

Apocalypse Keys is up on Itch.io! An urban fantasy RPG powered by the apocalypse and inspired by Hellboy, Apocalypse Keys is an absolutely genius RPG about building a family where keeping your communities safe. Jammi is both a dear friend and incredibly esteemed colleague, and every single game they write completely blows my mind. I don't get a lot of chances to play games lately, but this one is sitting firmly at the top of my list.

One of our artists is also doing a Kickstarter! Please go back Letty's wonderful project - a zine about some spooky and weird devils.

If you don't know, I also wrote another RPG of somewhat modest acclaim called Sleepaway! It's about a group of summer camp counselors keeping their kids safe from a horrific monster, and if you're a fan of the Oneshot Network you've probably listened to James D'Amato play it with Brennan Lee Mulligan, Noelle Stevenson, and Molly Ostertag (among others). On October 16th from 4-7 PDT I'll be streaming it with a group of folks at Friends Who Roll Dice to raise money for the Earth Day Network and RAINN. Please come out and support the show if you want a taste of "horror with heart" and help raise money for an important cause.

Speaking of fundraising and support, it's rapidly getting colder (at least where I live), and between environmental hazards, skyrocketing eviction rates, and the rise of an increasingly-despotic global right wing movement, our homeless friends and fellow community members are in grave danger. Please research your local mutual aid networks, shelters, food banks, addiction recovery programs, bail funds, and immigrant support centers, and ask them what they need right now. It can be easy to turn a blind eye to homeless people, especially when they're already a member of a marginalized and stigmatized group(s). But we all exist in community together, and in 2020 there's a lot of people who need our help.

Art!

Here's just a taste of some of the art we've been getting over the past month.

Thank you all for your support and patience. I'm so excited for this grand project to continue, and please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions! Until then, see you next time - when the leaves fall from the trees and the month of Grasping begins.