Stretch Goal Update - All The Glitters
almost 2 years ago – Tue, May 31, 2022 at 08:13:34 AM

Everyone should have their physicals now, but we're still hard at work on the digital stretch goals. 

Chega de Saudade and All That Glitters have both finished art, and have edited manuscripts now in the early stages of layout. Art is half done for Starborn Resistance, and manuscript are all due this month for the other 3 adventures. 

This update we want to talk about All That Glitters, so I'm going to hand over to Tom Mecredy: 

All That Glitters centres around Wollaston’s Hold, a system caught in the middle of a corporate cold war, with the ordinary inhabitants caught in the middle. The adventure begins with the crew finding a way through the military blockade, plunging them head first into this escalating conflict. With the situation inside the system perched on a knife edge, things are likely to go sideways with alarming rapidity. 

The adventure is written as a sandbox, giving players the freedom to carve their own path through the system, interacting with any number of factions in pursuit of these goals. Each faction is fully detailed with its own agenda and drives, along with a selection of key NPCs. As the players interact with these factions, conflict will drive the action forward and create even more chaos, sucking the crew into a swirling vortex of trouble. 

Some of the factions operating in Wollaston’s Hold include the Banshee Fleet, a band of screeching pirates commanded by the infamous Red Thorfinnson, the Oxide Twelves, a shockingly brutal security force working for Hagstrom, and the grizzled veterans of the Old Nags, who patrol the wilds of Wollaston-1 on clapped-out jetbikes and knackered old mares. 

Josh has done a fantastic job bringing Wollaston’s Hold to life. His art captures the industrial bleakness of the system, combined with the raw humanity of the humble worker. My favourite piece from the adventure is the Worker’s Liberation Front partisans preparing a heist from a warehouse hideaway. The tangle of blueprints and attentive figures give you a hint of the audacious raid being planned, giving the GM and players an insight into the kind of action they can expect in Wollaston’s Hold.

Thanks Tom! Can't wait to show you more of the adventures. 

Release 

Orbital Blues is now live on our webstore, and you can pick it up with cheap shipping from our new US warehouse. This means you can get cheap + effective shipping on dozens of products from the US + Canada, rather than praying eye-watering UK prices. 

UKGE

We're at UK Games Expo at Birmingham's NEC this weekend. Come say hello to us, tell us about your BLB games, grab yourself a FREE physical copy of an exclusive Orbital Blues pamphlet adventure One Hundred and Sixty Acres or a Best Left Buried adventure A Garden Most Foul. We'll also have dozens of other RPG books on sale from all over the world for your perusal and purchase.

Gangs of Titan City 

It's that time of year again and we're running another crowdfunding project. 

Gangs of Titan City is a new grimdark future roleplaying game from SoulMuppet. Thrusting its characters into a nightmare supercity that wants them dead, Gangs of Titan City casts your players as desperate gutterscum who will soon dominate the underworld as crimelords or end up dead. The game helps you create stories in the vein of Peaky Blinders, Scarface or Blades in the Dark, but cast into a brutal and uncompromising urban future.

That's all from us for now! We'll be back soon with info about Sin's Starborn Resistance

Zach

See You, Space Cowboys!

- Sleney, Clark, & Cox

Fulfilment Update + Chega de Saudade
about 2 years ago – Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 01:21:44 AM

Good news everyone! 

If you backed for a physical product and paid your shipping on BackerKit, you should have got your books by now. If you've not received any books or any tracking, drop an email to [email protected] and we'll see what we can do. If you're also missing any PDFs, bother Matt too! Kickstarter messages are difficult to track between projects, so email if the best way to contact us. 

Stretch Goals

We've had lots of questions about the stretch goal adventures. We're working on them! Books take a while to make and print. We started building Orbital Blues in December 2019! We don't rush things here at SoulMuppet, and we're hoping the five full books (!!!) funded as stretch goals for this project finished in the next 6-12 months. You'll get a PDFs if you pledges, and we'll probably print 'em too! 

We've got two completed manuscripts, one in early stages of editing, and two still being written. Art is finished for Chega de Saudade, and we're starting on layout now. 

Chega de Saudade is a uniquely Latin American adventure. It is about a strike on a remote station that the Outlaws intervene in. Giuliano, the writer, describe 'Saudade' here in the books introduction. It's... very Orbital Blues:

A portuguese word that roughly translates to “missing someone or something dearly,” it was adopted by workers as a means and mantra of survival. It is not uncommon to see tiny bottles of sand from a far-flung planet labelled with “home,” or to hear the heartbreaking distorted melodies of a choro played on a dying cassette deck.

Saudade can be akin to nostalgia, but it is a feeling that cannot be placated. You can become jaded by nostalgia, placate it with objects of your past or by literally living in it, but with saudade, there is only melancholy. Saudade is the whole people, feelings, songs, places, food and every part of the human experience, left in your life. It's like the markings of a pencil left on a book when you used it as support to write a love letter. The letter is gone and will never come back, yet the book is still marked.

And what is more painful than missing something you experienced? Missing something you only heard about, a life you wished you lived, but that is no longer achievable. This is the pain the younger workers feel. They are inundated by their parents' stories of their better, previous and more wonderful lives, yet all they know is their back-breaking work on the station. Think of them as kids listening to their dad’s old rock records and “wishing they were born at a different decade”. 

Of course, there's art to show off too. Josh has been hard at work. 

As you can see, Josh is very talented. He's currently looking for more creative and art work. As well as Orbital Blues, he's also done work on SINS and Hull Breach, a 3rd party book for Mothership that blew up on Kickstarter recently. If you want to work with him on a project (maybe posters or icons and logos for your ship, campaign or party members, some assets for a crowdfunding project or website, or even produce your own Orbital Blues adventure under our license), contact him here.

The Lost and the Jammed

We are trialing a move away from Kickstarter as their plans for blockchain don't align with our beliefs. Our first project is The Lost and the Jammed, a three stat, high lethality dungeon-crawling game filled with strange and esoteric firearms, wandering gunslinger-mystics and high-calibre monsters threatening to overwhelm the last strongholds of civilisation.

To support in this move you can obviously go and back the project, but you can also follow us on social media (Twitter ~  Instagram ~  Facebook), join our Discord community or our mailing list.

The SoulMuppet Store

We've reopened our webstore and posted about plans for 2022. That means as of now we offer EU-friendly shipping with duties paid via our store, so no more unexpected customs charges on arrival. We're rolling this out country by country, so if your country is unavailable at checkout, get in touch and we will set you up. We're also working away at opening a North American warehouse location to allow for cheaper shipping to the US and other North American countries. We'll be looking at our options for which warehouse works best for each country as the years moves forward.

And that's all! You'll here from us next month with updates on the stretch goal adventures. 

Zach

See You, Space Cowboys!

- Sleney, Clark, & Cox

Mini US Fulfilment Update
over 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 01, 2022 at 05:47:02 PM

Hey everyone,

Just a quick update on US fulfillment, the books have safely arrived and the shipping data has been handed off to the printers and ingested. We were ready to go, but spotted a significant bleed issue with the postcards, so we've had to get them reprinted.

Thankfully they print quite quickly, so they should arrive at the warehouse and get sent out in the next week.

If you're concerned about your shipping details due to a move, let me know via an email to [email protected] and I'll do what I can to get things redirected.

Thanks,

Zach

Non-US Tracking Info Provided
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 01:07:36 PM

Hey all,

For US customers, we're a day or two out from the warehouse. You'll get more info when I have it! 

I think everyone OUTSIDE THE US should have received their book, or if not some tracking info by now.

Uploading tracking to BackerKit has been very painful, it took about 6 hours work and a back and forth email chain with the support team at BackerKit.

Some of you might have received shipping data just now for books received last month or earlier, and if so I really apologise for the inconvenience. There's no way to different dates in the protocol, so I've just sent everyone who has it already shipping.

If you're missing tracking info, or a book, and want it, please email me at [email protected] (including your pledge level and country) and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Kickstarter messages are useless and very difficult to manage, email is the best way to get me.

Thanks,

Zach

See You, Space Cowboys!

- Sleney, Clark, & Cox

First Update of 2022
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jan 06, 2022 at 10:27:49 PM

Hello everyone, 

Short update with some fun info on fulfilment. 

• UK and RoW backers had their books sent out before the New Year, with some backers getting books just before Christmas. It might take a week or two more if you're not in UK or the EU, but be patient with us for a few more weeks. 
• The boat set off for the US on Christmas eve and arrived in Chester, PA yesterday! This means they should be reaching the warehouse in the next few days and you in the next few weeks. 

I had a few folx asking about the stretch goal adventures. These are going to take a long time to come out (5 new books take us time, especially with only one artist!). I had this to say: 

These books are in the pot and slowly boiling over! Of the five books promised, we  have finished two manuscripts currently being edited, a half dozen art  pieces and three WIP manuscripts. You'll get the PDFs when they come out  in the next 6-12 months, and you'll be notified here about physicals  when they come out on our store! 

If you have any questions, please EMAIL ME at [email protected]. Messages on KS get lost, and messages on Discord disappear immediately. 

Thanks for your patience! More updates soon with some info about the Stretch Goal Books. 

Zach

See You, Space Cowboys!

- Sleney, Clark, & Cox