Update - 23/02/2026
Hello, and welcome to another weekly update! I hope you all had a great weekend. I spent mine sick, unfortunately. I never do anything, and of course I had to get sick on the weekend that I had a birthday and the first Grand Master Patreon chat... I ended up cancelling both. Today I still feel like crap so most likely I will also have to cancel an interview I have... Just great.
Other than that, last week was quite productive. I only started feeling sick on Friday, so the rest of the week I worked a lot, and finally got the Arenmist Forest expansion for Riftbreakers done! I only need to add a few last details and I'll give you guys access to it ASAP. I'm hoping to have it done today, let's see if the fever allows me.
Other than that, I've worked a bit on other projects, like Empire Undying, and Ker Nethalas. My focus this year is to finish all the half-done projects I have, let's see how long I can focus on them, haha. One thing is for sure: Across a Thousand Hollow Vaults will be ready before the summer's here. It's funny how my non-fantasy settings (ATDW, Machine Gods) are actually my most popular ones; it appears that I'm a better sci fi writer than fantasy, even if I enjoy writing fantasy more... Furthermore, the vast majority of people enjoy my settings more than my rules... This is at least the impression I get from reading comments online; a lot of people play my games with different rules, keeping only the setting. Maybe I should make the effort to write a game for an existing system, a good old hack. Take The Black Hack, OSE, or whatever, don't mess with the existing rules at all (difficult for me, I know), and just focus on developing a good setting. I am actually considering transplanting Machine Gods to an existing OSR ruleset. It's not a priority, but it is something that I am considering... Pick an existing ruleset and make an "OSR series" of my games. This is actually something I started kind of working on a few years ago, when I was planning on releasing a 5e version of Riftbreakers. I ended up dropping it because I don't have time, but taking one of my simpler games and moving it to The Black Hack (I keep mentioning this system because I like it) would work well, I think. Or maybe making a Machine Gods version using the Dragonbane rules? They are super simple but I like them. What do you guys think?
For now, I'll focus on recovering and getting The Arenmist Forest ready for you guys. Have a great week!
Comments (4)
Hope you get well soon Alex! You’re the hardest working man in TTRPG! On a side note I’ve been super fascinated by setting books and hacks for an OSR compatible campaign lately so I fully support you exploring what it would look like for you to create one by converting one of your games or creating something brand new if that’s something you’re interested in!
Thanks for the support! The idea would be to do it as friction and effortless as possible, I don't want to add to my already very full plate. We'll see!
The OSR version of your settings is a fantastic idea! I think OSE is the most 'heutral' of them all so it's easy to convert to any other one like Shadowdark, WWN or ACKS, for example. I'd love to play Machine Gods in WWN as it completely a natural fit!
Yeah OSE is a true tabula rasa, y I like it precisely because of that. I mentioned The Black Hack though because Machine Gods is practically there already, the only big change would be turning it into a roll under system, and the rest is already basically the same as in The Black Hack (something I hadn't realized until I started looking into it yesterday). Another option would be Mörk Borg, since it's also super simple... We'll see!