Update - 18/05/2026
Hello, and welcome to another weekly update! I hope you all had a great weekend. I spent mine working, since I have so much stuff to do. As you can imagine, I'm mostly focused on getting all the Machine Gods stretch goal material done. Richard is done with his side of things, so I'm now going over all the many, many tables he's written for the Noxian Reclaimers book and deciding what should be kept, and what works best in other books. I'm adding my own material to the book, and combined we've written about 40K words of material so it's just too much for a single release. I want this book to be around 60 pages long, so all the additional material is going into the Meridian Sovereign book, which is the one I want to release with as much content as possible. The KS funds are going to fly fast, though, because I already owe both Richard and Simone (the illustrator) almost 10,000€. And I still have to pay Simone for his work for the two new books, and Richard has to write his part for the Meridian Sovereign... So I'm expecting another 10,000€ to go. The rest of the money will go to producing the Boxed sets, and paying taxes and all that stuff. I'm not even going to cover what I've already spent on the first three books, unfortunately. Or the Foundry modules... But I hope I'll manage to do that once the books are for sale. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but it just cannot seem to ever break even with a crowdfunding campaign, no matter how well it does. I think I was too ambitious, once again, and the two full books as stretch goals are complete overkill...
Speaking of the Machine Gods Foundry stuff, I spent Saturday going over it, and it's looking great! There are a few things that the designer needs to address, but I think it will be ready to go very, very soon. I'm also considering having a Machine Gods website to serve as a hub, seeing how this game has the potential to grow a lot (hopefully).
Aside from all that, I've worked a bit on the Book of Horrors for Ker Nethalas, and I'm 50 pages into it. Still 200 or so to go! Penny has already started working on the art (yes, I'm having Penny illustrate every single monster in the book), but it's going to take quite a few months to get all this done. It's a lot of work! By far the most ambitious Ker Nethalas project to date.
This week will be more of the same: Machine Gods all day long. I was writing the setting part of the Meridian Sovereign book, but now that I have all the content for the Noxian Reclaimers book, I want to get that done. I don't know if I'll have it ready for you guys this month, probably not. Next month for sure, though!
So that's it for now, I'm going back to editing. Have a great week!
Comments (4)
As a engineer I think you have a feature creep problem. I know you want to give everyone as much as possible but if you can't make a living then in the end its not serving us well. I love your work just looking at my physical bookshelf I see 7 different games (if you count original Ker nethalas separate from grave bound) Like Ruthless Heavens and Boundless Fate and Choir of flesh from what you have mentioned not having good sales post Kickstarter. Though personally I think they are brilliant. Kickstarter is a great way to test the waters but if you are not coming out at least even after paying yourself its not a sustainable plan. Do you have good evidence that the extra book stretch goals brought in more sales? I am seeing more and more Kickstarter where there are no stretch goal that just state this is the product and its complete or we just need funding for art and production (also to pay ourselves is the quiet part ). I am super excited about the book of horrors and knowing that its going to cost an arm and a leg to do all that art. I would be willing to pay more to help cover that increased cost. For complete games your products are ridiculously cheap. I would also love a hardbound pod version of the book of horrors. This is just me spit balling because I love your work and I want to keep seeing it. I am excited to see the new Velarian Codex and the Book of Domains.
Oh I definitely have a feature creep problem, haha. I get too excited and just keep adding stuff... I don't honestly know if adding more stretch goals increases sales, but it does increase interest, and helps to the FOMO part of any KS campaign: join now and get all this stuff for free, or you'll have to pay for it later on. I did take a risk with Machine Gods because I think it is going to be a success; the campaign did incredibly well and the general response has been very positive, so I am confident I'll be able to profit from all this monumental effort. Thank you so much for your concern and support, it really helps a lot!
Yeah, full books as stretchgoals is pretty insane. Maybe an extra chapter or a small zine might be more appropriate.
Yes, that's always what I've done. I'm not sure why I did it this way, haha. Oh well, let's hope they sell well once they're released! I think they're going to be extremely good, and a must-have for fans of the game.