We are bearing down on the front of the pack and you’ve kept us going strong as we’ve already broken past our first stretch goal! So excited to have Rae Nedjadi and Josh Hittie joining us as planet writers for the Pinball Sector Planet. We’ve still got a few days to hit our next goal at 20,000, with a solo racing adventure from Elliot Davis if you need a reminder:
And from there, our next two stretch goals are giving you even more to add to your F-Infiniti play experience! At $22,500, our next stretch goal comes to us from Tony Vasinda, with accompanying art by Fabian Lelay:
To top it all off, at $25,000 raised for F-Infiniti, all backers will also be getting an accompanying soundtrack courtesy of Jo Vasinda!
Make sure you check out the rest of the amazing RPGs here with us for Orbital Blues Month too, we’ve got just 8 days to go! We’re going to be finishing this race strong with one more update before we close out next week, keep your pedals to the metal everyone!
Outta Gas is the story of a racer on their last lap. Using The Wanderer ruleset, this solo supplement will allow players to explore the world and rules of Formula Infiniti as a lone Orbital Blues character reflecting on their life behind the wheel.
Which topic would you like to see explored in more depth in this expansion? Specifically, which details regarding these themes would you like them to cover?
I’m a huge fan of the Cavaliers of Afterburn, I hope they have more space in this expansion <3
I've been having a kinda crazy couple of weeks, so I apologize for being quieter than I was at the start of this thing. I promise I haven't forgotten about y'all! I've got one more Designer Diary in the queue, and I'm cooking up some upgrades to make this book even better.
In it, Eryk Sawicki from Peregrine Press sat down with Chris Auriau (who you may recognize from fellow OB Month project Paramour by Josh Domanski & Chris Airiau) to talk through Electric Sheep Shuffle. The first module I wrote for OB (and I think the first one I'd written for any game?)
It is honestly a really neat podcast in general, but this one is particularly of interest to people excited for Vaporwave Wanderlust, and/or people who've picked up ESS in the Add-ons.
We’re hurtling close to the next set of stretch goals, and we’re so incredibly pumped about the prospect of being able to create the Map of the Reach. In anticipation of hopefully hitting that goal, Zach and Josh have been collating a list of corporations, organisations, planets, sectors and systems that have been mentioned in previous adventures into a comprehensive world-building doc.
The hope of Outlaws and Corporations is that you can use the new material to run galaxy spanning campaigns that jump between different published adventures, homebrew materials and third party adventures from across the Orbital Blues (and general sci-fi) scene, so the connective tissue provided by OXC and the new map are going to be a huge part of that toolkit.
We had a few questions about the new character sheet. If you want to grab a character sheet notepad, it's now available as an add-on for your pledge! The updated version will be made available digitally as soon as it is finished.
Atmospheric Breakup
This weekend we’re showcasing a special two-part Actual Play of ATMOSPHERIC BREAKUP, the dramatic arc-ending adventure available as one of the bonus rewards for backing all six Orbital Blues Month projects. This is a perfect way to get a sneak peek into what's in the adventure and see how it could play out at your table.
ATMOSPHERIC BREAKUP is an adventure toolbox for providing a climactic ending to any ORBITAL BLUES arc, filled with climax and heartbreak. It centres on a showdown with a Nemesis pulled from the Crews’ Troubles, the perfect adversary for any sad space cowboy. The setting is Affinity Station, an isolated space station powered by a prototype power source, and things are sure to end in blood, tears, or both.
ORBITAL BLUES co-creator Zach Cox is sitting in the Storyteller chair, joined by a series of stars from across our actual play scene: StellaLuna, Drakoniques, Brain Flaherty, and Michelle Kelly. This’ll be a game that’s sure to make us feel the blues more than ever before. These poor space cowboys don’t know what’s coming for them.
Tune in at 11am EST / 4pm BST on Saturday 25th for session 1, then the same time on Sunday for session 2. We’ll be streaming on twitch.tv/tonyplusone, and it’ll all be linked on the project page.
Latest Media
Josh, Sam and Zach all did an extended interview as part of the Rascal 7, where they talk about the beating heart of our game, the needle drop hits, and discuss the nature of running a community event like Orbital Blues Month. You can grab some real insight into the thoughts and intent of the three-headed sad-space-cowboy giant, and how different parts of the team approached creating Orbital Blues.
Original Orbital Blues graphic designer and Jupiter in Eb Minor creator LoneArchivist appeared on Many Sided Media’s Talk of the Table Podcast for an interview with Brian and Elliot on RPG graphic design and layout. You can listen to Lone talking about his work on Orbital Blues, his other collaboration with Zach on the DIE RPG, the mothership community project Hull Breach and many, many more.
Zach also made an appearance on the Weekly Scroll for the umpteenth time, weighing in with crispy takes on Backerkit vs Kickstarter, the design of a collaboration month, the creation of the Orbital Blues setting, and what is next for SoulMuppet. Find it wherever you get your podcasts!
The final episode of the Why We Roll arc from Stillfleet Studios came out yesterday, featuring Wes Franks of Formula-Infiniti as their guest for the day. Be sure to check it out!
Elliot Davis and Josh Dormanski were the guests on Now You’ve Zine It show on PlusOneExp, with the two creators cross-interviewing each other and deep diving into The Wanderer (Elliot’s SoulMuppet Published solo game for ORBITAL BLUES) and Paramour (Josh’s contribution to OB month). Watch along for a thorough exploration of the two zines… Watch the vod on Twitch or YouTube.
Thanks again for all your support folks and hopefully the next time we speak we'll be celebrating hitting that next stretch goal!
The Gasser Union on Leviathan Prime may not be the biggest pack of fans, but as the sector's largest Worker Owned Fuel Consortium, GULP’s Solidarity Circuit pays out better than most.
As we are quickly approaching the final week of Orbital Blues Month, we have surpassed our second and third stretch goals for Paramour. That means we'll be adding in supplemental mechanics for car chases and getting more art from Lur Noise.
Car Chases
Most of the action of Paramour takes place in the streets of Slushtown. While Orbital Blues has a great set of advice and mechanics for space combat, it doesn't quite cover the street level. For this bonus appendix, we're going to include additional advice on how to manage chase scenes and car combat. We're currently toying with some new "push your luck" mechanics to test and see if there's anything worth including on that end.
You'll have a chance to put these mechanics to the test in Ragtime Repo, which is part of the Corpo Gatecrasher Bundle, :)
The Next Stretch Goal
For our next revealed stretch goal, if we make it up to $7,250 we'll get some stickers printed for inclusion with the physical orders so that you can stick Cassandra Cross's charming visage on to your surface of choice.
A New Review
To continue to celebrate OBM, I jumped on Chris's podcast Ansible Uplink for a review of two scenarios from Rogue Anthems, the collection of Orbital Blues pamphlets contained within a VHS box that was released as part of the Afterburn crowdfunding.
As part of their own OBM celebrations, fellow contributor Tony from PlusOneExp invited me on to an episode of Now You've Zine It, the show where two tabletop creators read the other's work and then interview each other about it. I was joined by Elliot Davis for a deep dive into Paramour and The Wanderer, Elliot's zine for solo play for OB. This was a really great time and there are plenty of juicy details on Paramour that we discussed if you're curious as to what will lie within the pages of the zine.
Don't forget to check out the other projects for Orbital Blues Month if you haven't already! With all projects funded, we're deep into stretch goal territory. Here's a look at what's in store:
Outlaws & Corporations: Just a few thousand away from unlocking a new foldout map detailing an in-universe map for Orbital Blues.
F-Infinity: The threshold for a new planet to race your ships has just been crossed with more to be revealed.
Just a heads up, after we launched the campaign the support inbox was flooded with spam messages. If you had a legitimate question or request for clarification during this time, there's a good chance I missed it as a result. If you still have topics you'd like to discuss, feel free to create a community post or shoot in another support email now that the spam has calmed down. Your patience is appreciated!
Outta Gas is the story of a racer on their last lap. Using The Wanderer ruleset, this solo supplement will allow players to explore the world and rules of Formula Infiniti as a lone Orbital Blues character reflecting on their life behind the wheel.
