Longwinter Intermezzo (Patreon)

Seoul, Mid November, 2020

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First, a public announcement:

The hexers of the cauldron of creation (over on the stratometaship discord) have completed their first zine: Tales From the Gastro Zone -- food magic, restaurant fights, and more. All free, all seacat and uvg-compatible. Check it out!

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Dear Heroes,

A bit of a break from Seacat for a moment ... Winter is nearly here! This Longwinter book, a sequel to Witchburner, was supposed to be all finished last year! Or the year before! But it wasn't. In production, we ran into ... challenges. Books sometimes don't want to be finished when we think they should be finished.

I've already gone on at length about my experience of burnout last autumn and winter, so I won't bore you with that. In August I was about to publish Longwinter, but then discovered several problems with the manuscript that meant I would have to comb through the entire document, paragraph by paragraph, and my heart sank.

I frankly didn't have the energy to face that until ... well ... late last week. Now it's nearly done and so I'm sharing it with you. After all, it wouldn't have happened without your support and you do deserve some nice content for your patience!

Right, so what are we looking at with the Longwinter Icebox?

• A 100-page, full-color player's book detailing the barony of Brezim in all its fin de siecle glory. About 50 color illustrations. Simple winter weather and cold survival mechanics.
• A 120-page, full-color but less illustrated book for the referee, detailing how the different factions act and react, more encounter tables, a brief bestiary (that's a part I need to still write up), and the card-based escape mechanic with 54 different locations, character encounters, and environmental challenges. Only about 10 illustrations for now, because ... yeah, less art for referees!

The book's nearly ready now, which is great. Right now:

• I need to finish some art, including possibly a new cover.
• I'm also in need of typohunters! If any of you would be interested in participating for a close reading (and immortalization in the credits) I would be honored.
  (Edit: a few kind folks have already stepped up to read, and their found typos are fixed in version 0.95b)
• I'm in discussions with Exalted Funeral Press about later publication and distribution. I'm pushing for a yuletime kickstarter to make a pretty physical book.

Since I've already released Longwinter previously on patreon, I'll do so again, for free, once it's all finished. However, a warning, I'm going to pull the .pdfs after some time (I still need to figure out a repository for the metaheroes, give me time on that, I'm not a web tech guru person).

A spread from the referee's book.

A spread from the players' book.

Another page from the players' book.

And another spread from the referee's book.

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OTHER NEWS

There are two other major things I'm working on this month.

1. Finishing the hero-generation section of Seacat. Fingers crossed, all the equipment and advancement tables should be done next week! So many fingers, so crossed.

2. Writing Holy Mountain Shaker the adventure for the OSE kickstarter. Me being me, I confess ... it rhymes with the setting of Witchburner and Longwinter very well, so there are good odds that after it's completed for OSE, we'll also slot it into the developing lore of the Lastlands. Holy Mountain Shaker is now going through its last early playtests and I'll be writing and mapping it up soon.

Finally, for those of you who read this far, it's time to share the discord link again: https://discord.gg/ymxu39Ya ... remember, if you're a hero and want to join, just message me and I'll add you.

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As always, thank you for your patience, support, and kindness!

—Luka