Spooky Season Surprises Coming (Patreon)

Hello, dear heroes!

I have been remiss—I had hoped to post more these last few weeks, but an unexpected opportunity came up. I've often done some small thing for halloween (e.g. the Well-Gourded Village), and one could argue that both Witchburner and Longwinter* are, basically, spooky halloween-appropriate adventures.

I'd talked about the horror adventure Let Us In before. I'd hoped to get it done in summer, but ... I didn't. Well, talking with Exalted Funeral, we came up with the idea of doing a special event, a spooky bundle, if you will, and I talked up how Let Us In would be a perfect way to give a little bit of special oomph to the event.

And Matt agreed.

And then there was this little opportunity to do something a little bit ... unusual for the print run (at least for me), which really fit with the 70s theme for the module.

And that was great, but it did mean prepping the art was a little bit more challenging.

Now, my initial estimate was it would take me a week to do the whole thing. And I know myself. I knew even when I made the estimate, that it was wrong. So I revised it to two weeks. And this was almost spot on, but ... you know ... 14 days is basically three weeks. Because, of course, I can't go without rest on weekends.

So today I shipped off the print files on Let Us In.

So, what's in this pseudo-70s horror one-shot system-neutral adventure?

- 16 pages
- 4 pre-gen characters
- a scenario with some random generators and a harsh timeline
- the antagonists
- a detailed modernist mansion for the location
- a few callouts to real-world culture and les autres arts
- some musical inspiration (including a playlist I haven't updated properly)

- and an ultra-light d6 system for any group stuck with nothing but one die and one pencil.

Honestly, I'm super excited about Let Us In. I think it's some of my best design, and the adventure is—I think—supremely creepy. If you liked Witchburner, this one is ... a little bit similar.

And I like some of the art I've done for it, too.

Like ... really proud of it.

Ok, that's great, but ... why aren't you sharing it now?

Well, because it's going to print right ... uhh ... now! And I'm going to share it in the fullness of time and marketing co-ordination. Ok, rewind, reword.

I'm waiting to see how the physical booklets turn out, and to hammer out the details of the Hallow's Samhain Bundle at Exalted. But, the .pdf of this little beast is coming here, too.

Soon. In time for Pet Sematery season.

Till then, I can perhaps appease you with this lovely map (and yes, I'll share a 300 dpi version in the fullness of time):

And the labelled manse:

I trust nobody will think me sharing the handouts is too much of a spoiler :)

By the way, the full resolution map is about 7600 pixels wide ... so ... it's not small.

And Other News?

So, this was a ridiculously intense little project over the last ... uh ... 3 weeks or so. But other things are also happening:

• Heavy Metal Heroes: I'm reviewing the submitted songs and setting up a playlist and a voting structure. It's been a bit back-burnery, but ... some of the structure of LUI (especially the pre-gen character design) will carry over.

• Seacat / UVG Cards:With Saker Tarsos joining wizardthieffighter.com (e.g. guest blog on the digital cards: https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2021/srdcat-sneak-peek-collections/) we've also been detailing the collaboration agreement on the cards. It's ... going to be a big project ... and we had to iron out a lot of rights issues. Heck, we got paid legal help to sort out the whole thing — that's how big we expect / hope it to be. We've got a roadmap of at least 5 decks now, and one deck finished. Next step is getting the first deck test-printed to see if it works well.

• Seacat Beyond the Black City: The next update will see more magic albums, some more examples on defences and target numbers (lots of folks get confused because the numbers are so much lower than in the OG game. Now, related to that ...

• UVGenesis: One thing I struggled with is how to mesh the skins from seacat breve with what seacat has become. I thought about rolling them into SBBC, but that would really blow up the page count. And it's also a slightly parallel thing ... and then the title for a product of hero geneses (skins, paths, classes, backgrounds, archetypes, whatever you want to call them) came to me. U V G E N E S I S. Including such glories as the antenna monks who modify themselves to be the perfect receivers of the wisdom of the spheres until all that remains is a levitating information aggregator, a perfect observer of the cosmos.

I ... I know I said I'm just focussing on Seacat until its done, but ... I ... I might layout some pages of UVGenesis along the way. Just ... for a taste. And ... penglings.

OK.

Anyway, before the end of this month, expect:

More Seacat. Possibly UVGenesis. And definitely LUI. Let him in.

Till then, enjoy the garden as the leaves turn groan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7Us9cQknc

With pumpkins and mulled cheer,

—Luka
*Though, in this case, it's like Helloween stretches all the way through and past Yuletide.