The adventure is almost hereā¦ weāre just 48 hours away from the launch of Brambletrek - Tales in the Hundred Acre Woods! š±
Weāve got some exciting surprises lined up and you wonāt want to miss out š
š§øFirst up: A WINNIE THE POOH PLUSHIE!! š§ø
This cutie is joining our pledge levels, and weāre pumped to finally show you the design! Itās adorable, itās squishy, and weāre not sure how many of these weāll be making, so be ready to snap him up before heās gone!
š± The Heffalumps Are Here!š±
You all voted, and the Heffalumps have officially claimed the title of the creepiest creature in the woods! We canāt blame you; those glowing eyes and enchanted crystals are enough to spook anyone!
To celebrate, hereās your brand-new Heffalump stamp for your sticker collection:
āļø Your Next Challenge Awaits... āļø
āYour path winds through a misty glade, the air thick with the scent of pine. But as you round a bend, you find your way blocked - a bridge, once sturdy, now lies shattered over a rushing river. The water churns, cold and relentless. You must find a way across if youāre to continue your questā¦ā
What will you do? Build a boat? Catapult yourself over the river? or simply swim across? Let us know in the poll below š
Your choice will decide the next stamp design, so choose wisely!
š Almost at 5,000 Followers! š
Weāre so close! Less than 175 followers to go before we hit our 5k milestone - and we NEED your help! If we reach this goal, you'll unlock a gorgeous cloth map of the Hundred Acre Woods. Just imagine laying it out as you play, tracing your journey through the thickets and glades.
How You Can Help:
š Share our campaign with your fellow adventurers! š Follow if you havenāt already - every follow counts!
The countdown is ON, and we canāt wait to share this magical adventure with you.
I am SO excited to have reached the huge milestone of 1500 followers!!!
To celebrate, I wanted to share the game overview graphic with ya'll.
What do we think? I wanted to make a game that was easy to learn but still a rather tactical experience. There will be a full how to play video on the page as well for those who want to get into the details.
If you want to help playtest the game, join my discord and self assign the playtester role!
We're only a few days away from the launch of Despair Dilemma, so I wanted to take a chance to collect the information from our previous updates and let you know about our plans for the first 48 hours of the crowdfunding campaign! We've finally finished up the crowdfunding page, and we're really excited to show it to you very soon.
There's a decent bit to cover, and ideally we'll be editing this to add even more if we need to, so I'll get right into it!
Reveals (What's in the Despair Dilemma Book)
In the lead up to the crowdfunding campaign, we made a few posts describing some of the elements of the book you'll be gaining access to if you back the campaign!
Remember that if you want to see how the game plays, we have a free demo available on Itch and TTS.
The Bleeding Heart Community Drive (Community Copies)
A lot of crowdfunding campaigns offer a bonus for backing in the first 48 hours. This is important because success in the first couple days is essential to the overall success of a campaign - one backer during this time can represent up to three backers across the whole thing.
At the same time, we're generally not a fan of people missing out on anything or paying more if they couldn't support at the launch or didn't catch the project in the first couple days! So we came up with an answer that we believe has the best of both worlds - "The Bleeding Heart Community Drive".
For each backer that supports our project at any level in the first 48 hours, we'll be donating a Community Copy of the game to people in need over Itch.io. You won't miss out on any other content, but you will get to spread the love of TTRPGs to people across the world!!
Let's Make a Death Game! (Together)
We want to make something exciting with you - all of you! While we're already adding more Death Game Sheets with stretch goals, we thought it'd be fun to make one up together with our backers! Over the course of the campaign, throughout different update posts, we'll be asking people to make recommendations for different parts of the Death Game Sheet and to vote on which recommendation you like best! The first of these questions ("Where are we setting our Death Game Sheet?") will be included in an update in the first 48 hours, and you can share your ideas then!
Streaming the Game (With You)
Having been busy hosting the Pocketopia Showcase streams, we realized we haven't actually taken the chance to stream the game itself! Despair Dilemma is a game all about creating stories together, so we had an idea; we'll let chat (all of you) take control of a Plot Sheet!
Playing Despair Dilemma WITH CHAT! March 14 9:30PM ETD / March 14 1:30AM GMT Take control of The Mob's Will alongside Nora Jean Haynes and Iris Cassandra Saintclaire as we explore Despair Dilemma!
There's a good chance we won't be able to complete a whole play session (we're not sure how long it will take to figure out what chat wants to do haha), but if things get cut off we'll plan a followup stream soon after!
-- Thank you all so much for your time, and I hope you're as excited about the launch as we are!! Nora Jean Haynes
Fancy getting tooled up and giving our Nuns with Guns TTRPG a try? You can get a copy of the Quickstart Guide here.
Make sure to head over and follow the project here and help us punch demons and save the world! Sisterhood launches March 13th as part of Pocketopia 2025.
Only 12 more days until POND launches on Backerkit oh my god
Looks like Cowboy and Wizard Frog are the most popular good boys of the factions so far, so I'd love to crowdsource some ideas for their Flavor Text before the campaign begins~
Every Faction gets their own unique deck of 10 starting cards, with 7 copies of their faction's Frog card and 3 copies of "Frog with a Knife".
So far, I'm really in love with the flavor text idea of "WHO GAVE HIM A KNIFE?" for Frog with a Knife. What do ya'll think would be fun for Wizard Frogs and Cowboy Frogs?
Thank you to everyone who made it for the first Pocketopia Showcase Stream, it was a blast! If you missed the chance to join us, we have a VOD set up on our YouTube Channel here so you can get a quick look at some of the TTRPG Projects available in Pocketopia! Be sure to join us next week for the Card & Board Game showcase too!
With that all said, lets follow up last weeks update on the Plot Books with a look at the Death Game Sheets available in Despair Dilemma!
The Five* Death Game Sheets Books
The Death Game Sheet you choose at the start of your session represents the core setting for the Death Game you and your friends will be masterminding! Each of the five options we've included in the core book follow unique story lines and many have special mechanics associated with them to help fulfill the type of setting they represent. These five Death Game Sheets are:
Old Locke Mansion ( ā ļøļø ) Characters are trapped in a mansion and must kill to escape.
The S.S. Opportunity ( ā ļøļø ) Those down on their luck are entered into a death game on a cruise.
Oubliette Academy ( ā ļøļøā ļøļø ) The world's premiere students are forced into a game of life and death.
Brimstone Island ( ā ļøļøā ļøļø ) Shipwrecked and without a way back home, characters must kill to survive.
Hikyougawa Village ( ā ļøļøā ļøļøā ļøļø ) Locals and visitors are trapped by a supernatural force in a rural village
The skulls next to each sheet represent how many extra mechanics the Death Game Sheet adds and how much of an impact they'll make on your play session. For example, Old Locke Mansion adds no special mechanics but Oubliette Academy adds a Special Skills system to show off the victims expertise Hikyougawa Village adds taboos that can kill characters when crossed enough times!
With that said, the Death Game Sheets we've made aren't the only Death Game Sheets you'll be able to play with! Despair Dilemma comes with a set of Death Game Sheet Creation tools to help you make any kind of Death Game you can imagine! Additionally, we have a number of stretch goals planned to commission Death Game Sheets from Content Creators across the Death Game fandom!
The first of these will be a Death Game Sheet by the developer of the fan game Danganronpa: Antebellum, Rippile! We're very excited to see what she's going to make for Despair Dilemma, and this is only the start of some pretty exciting collaborations we have in the works as we reach higher and higher stretch goals!
I'm excited to show y'all more as we get closer to launch! Nora Jean Haynes
While you can play the Demo Kit right now to give the game a go, we've gotten some questions asking to describe what Plot Books are and to reveal the four Plot Books not available in the Demo Kit!
Unlike a lot of other TTRPGs, in Despair Dilemma, you don't take on the role of a single character. Instead, you'll be responsible for achieving the goals of a certain "narrative concept" or to otherwise play a "mastermind with certain goals for the Death Game". Plot Books define the core concept you'll be trying to achieve and help to guide you through creating an exciting Death Game.
Basically, this means Plot Books act as your "Class" or "Playbook" while playing Despair Dilemma. Depending on the Plot Book you play, you'll have unique abilities that let you complete control the narrative in unique ways, as well as unique goals that unlock even more abilities if they're achieved.
The Eight Plot Books
We've designed the eight Plot Books in Despair Dilemma to cover a wide breadth of Death Game's, and depending on the ones you and everyone else at the table pick, you'll create different stories and play an almost entirely different game. These Plot Books are:
The Massacreās Edge This plot book introduces murder plots and motives to the game, increasing the number of deaths significantly. Characters will get mad at each other, use the death game as an excuse to kill, and die in horrible ways.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Arguments between characters.
Angst and stupid decisions.
Lots and lots of killing and death.
The Detectiveās Trial This plot book introduces a special character called The Detective who works to solve the mysteries and murders of everyone around them. The Detective will take center stage, and the mysteries of the game will become a lot more prominent.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Playing the main character.
Creating and answering mysteries.
Holding trials to punish the killer.
The Traitorās Sabotage This plot book gives a single character in the game the secret role of The Traitor, tasked with creating havoc while hiding their identity until the perfect moment. Wrack the cast with distrust, and sabotage plans left and right!
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Keeping a secret from everyone else.
Messing with peopleās plans.
Creating interpersonal drama.
The Challengeās Inevitability This plot book forces the characters into playing games that are more specific than just ācan you surviveā. The victims of the game will be trapped in rooms where they must solve puzzles and challenges, with their lives on the line each time.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Making Locations meaningful.
Tricks and Faustian Bargains.
Bringing the spoils to the victors.
The Witchās Spell This plot book introduces a supernatural element to the game and forces characters to question what's real and what's fiction. Characters will become believers, and some will do impossible unexplainable things.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Magic, sci-fi, or the supernatural.
Going beyond the āpossibleā.
Creative solutions to mysteries.
The Mastermindās Mask This plot book introduces a face to represent the people who made this Death Game and lets them directly manipulate the game. The Mask will cause chaos, and if they die, reveal the true mastermind of this game.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Being the true owner of this game.
Mascot characters having fun.
Watching the world burn.
The Peopleās Hope This plot book gives the characters a real chance at unifying together and fighting the game head-on. Characters will have lucky breaks, find solidarity in each other, and maybe even get out of this with everything okay in the end.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
A silver lining in harsh times.
The strength of people working together.
A little bit of luck on your side.
The Mobās Will This plot book introduces a large number of background characters to the game. These extras aren't the main characters and donāt have unique names or truths, but do control the way the game plays out.
Play this Plot Book if you like:
Making choices for other players.
Creating new characters.
Starting a revolution.
-- We're working hard to get the game ready for you to play as soon as the campaign finishes. In the mean time, we'd love to hear which Plot Book you're most excited to play when the full game releases!
I hope you have a fantastic week, Nora Jean Haynes
