A bit of housekeeping and shilling to end this campaign right!
Survey Stragglers There are only 6 folks who haven't completed their surveys yet, and I'd like to close out this campaign. So, I'll be emailing them directly, and they will have until Oct. 31st, 2025 to provide what's missing. If not, they'll be refunded and their pledges canceled. Everyone else should have all of their rewards in hand!
UK/EU Sales Unfortunately, my first shipment of books to a UK store (able to ship into the EU) is erroneously stuck in the customs pocket dimension, since it should be zero-rated and not require any duties.
UPS has a ton of this nonsense going on for importing into the US right now, of course, but I hadn't seen any mention of new recurring issues for UK imports. Either I'm just not plugged into that news, or I got unlucky. I'm trying to find the right people at UPS to clear this up ASAP.
Another UK store that's requesting copies for sale in the UK and EU is still being a bit slow in response, but we are moving forward.
Again, I'll let people know when Fear of a Daily Planet is available across the pond.
Plugs With plenty of zines ready to start funding for the next Mothership Month in less than two weeks, be sure to check out these projects from my colleagues and Devil's Due contributors:
Explore the Spinal Crux District of Prospero's Dream in Flatline on the Blocks, where every Block has its secrets. 18 veteran Mothership writers, artists, and more have formed a collective to bring this project to life, led by Chris Airiau. A number of Devil’s Due teammates are part of the crew too—each having completed their contributions here! If you back in the first 48 hours, you can bag the very slick patch shown above, designed by Scragend.
Uncover a conspiracy across The Dream while investigating blackmarket clones in The Conduit, by Columbary TTRPG. Ben King and team are creating an adventure that digs deeper into the mysteries in Doptown and The Choke. See more of Jettila Lewis’ art on Instagram.
Bring the Solarian star worshippers to your game with Sunlit Path, by RAC Computing and Joshua Justice. Explore a sunken Solarian temple, barter at the Sun Market, and sail the solar winds with 2 brand new player classes. Chris Airiau will be editing too.
The Solstice is Coming in Rites of Renewal, by Joshua Luke Cable and Alice Gribble, edited by Chris Airiau. A habitation block on The Dream prepares for a three-day festival. Alice is illustrating this zine with real actual linocut artwork!
With the arrival of the newest slickworld craze, Beach Breeze Rally DX, on Prospero's Dream, let your players loose in an open sandbox adventure, competitive minigame, and a manipulatable leaderboard in Breathe Easy. Writing by D. G. Chapman, art and layout by Marco Serrano, and editing also by Chris Airiau.
Find a missing doctor and save a dying clinic in All On Red, by Glue Trap Games. Deal with medical emergencies, a gang of space greasers, and interstellar dissident plots in order to find him in this zine intended for short campaign play. Chris is doing development work on this one too!
I've got everything printed and in stock, and I'm mostly finished with the tedious task of stuffing mailers for all your orders!
The bees have been diligently overseeing the process.
I'll be shipping them out in batches up to early next week to avoid accruing the local post office's ire, so your package might get dropped off as late as Monday. When you receive your BackerKit email with your tracking info, give the tracking at least a few days to start updating.
The patches came out pretty well too, considering it's somewhat of a complex design.
BackerKit emails with your PDF links should also be sent out today! They'll let you claim the PDFs on itch.io for any products you're supposed to get a PDF for. This is the first I've used BackerKit to fulfill digital goods, so if there are any hitches, drop me a message and give me a bit of time to figure out a fix. But I think I've set it all up to go smoothly.
As always, if you have any issues with your shipment or digital goods delivery, let me know via email ([email protected]), providing me with your backer email and a rundown of your issue.
For anyone who didn't back during the campaign or place a preorder, Fear of a Daily Planet is now live on itch.io, where you can order digital or physical copies. (PDFs will be available on DTRPG in about a week.) I'll also be shipping out copies to wholesalers and some stores over the next week or so. If you want your friendly local game store to get some copies in, you can tell them they'll be able to order it from Tuesday Knight Games or Studio 2, but give it a couple weeks for the copies to arrive there and be processed and posted. (Indie Press Revolution seems to be stepping away from Mothership zines, unfortunately.)
Thank you all once again for your support and patience as I wrapped up this project! If you haven't already, check out the other massive Mothership book I'm a part of, the space pirate haven of Devil's Due, still open for late pledges as we work through the layout process.
And if any of you happen to need editing services (TTRPG or otherwise), my client schedule is thinning out, so feel free to reach out to me with a bit about your project for a quote.
Now that things are moving, they're picking up steam. But we're still at only about 89% survey completion, so please be sure to fill out your survey if you haven't already! If you've lost the survey email, you can go to https://foadp.backerkit.com/ and enter the email address you used to pledge to get a survey link resent to you.
I've also placed the order for the patches, and I'm topping up the stock of my other products for those of you who added them to your order. It's not yet too late to add any these to your pledge or pre-order! However, I will be locking orders and closing the pre-order shop on Friday, Aug. 15th, and I'll charge your cards for any outstanding payments just a couple days after.
Once I place the print order and get the patches and other restock items in hand, I'll then lock your shipping addresses. Depending on how smoothly those orders and the payment charges go, it'll likely be in the last or second-to-last week of August, but I will send out an announcement 48 hours before locking addresses. If you happen to be moving around the end of the month or early next month, please email me ([email protected]) sooner rather than later so I can confirm your latest address when I'm ready to actually put packages in the mail.
I've been poring over the print proofs and finding a handful of issues to correct before the full print run. But so far, they're looking good! Have a few sample pics below. The digital version should be fully hyperlinked now too, and I'll be trying new methods of compressing the file for it to be as lean as I can manage without sacrificing too much visual quality.
Thanks so much for your patience as I've been finishing this module. Light is now shining at the end of this ink-drenched tunnel!
After some playtesting, revisions, and a new simple art piece, I've made solid progress. I'm happy to say the layout is finished!
Now, between doing layout reviews on Devil's Due chapters, I'll start the tedious work: hyperlinking the page and statblock references in the PDF for easier use, flattening out the complicated backgrounds to reduce digital file size, print file prep, last-minute proofreads, and finally ordering some test print books and the patches.
I'll be starting the "smoke test" for the backer surveys shortly, which will go out to about 5% of you. Then, if there aren't any problems, you'll all get your backer surveys soon thereafter. I'll then eventually close the preorder store.
If everything stays on schedule, I'll hopefully be locking orders and shipping addresses sometime around mid August, but I'll send out an additional warning before doing so.
As yet another teaser, I've put a couple of layout samples in the backers-only section below, to avoid accidental spoilers.
I know I'm repeating myself a lot, but thanks everybody for your support!
With Devil's Due off to the layout artist, I've been able to dig back into my own layout work and art for Fear of a Daily Planet.
Since most spreads are styled as several layers of paper, I'm finding that only having black and white to work with while trying to both vary the paper backgrounds and keep the text easily legible is certainly a challenge. I also have the privilege of seeing the work in progress of the Straight Arrows module, by Ryan at RAC Computing, which deploys a similar material-driven, layered collage approach with, honestly, a lot more finesse and control. It's a bit intimidating! But Ryan is using actual collages he makes himself and then photographs to become the page backgrounds, whereas my setup requires me to work solely digitally with licensable and public domain files.
But I'll manage! I've been able to finish all of the art, which feels like a big milestone, although there are a couple pieces I might redo to see if I can improve on them.
Around 70% of the spreads have their layouts finished, and when it's done, I'll have to review the print proofs very closely to judge the readability of each section and make adjustments. Making the hyperlinks for the digital PDF will also take some time.
But here are a few samples to hold you over: art of a Ward cultist, a redacted version of the d100 I Read the Print spread, and slightly updated cover art.
Depiction of a Ward cultist. Their filler text and the parallel and perpendicular nature of their ritualistic glyphs are believed to protect them from Dolorem Ipsum.
This roll table is a mix of mission hooks, useful items, worldbuilding, thematic nods, and awful puns, and it will obviously be uncensored in the actual book.
Updated cover, with a cut-out, printed planet.
I appreciate the support my backers and others in the community showed with my weather-related setback. Hoping there won't be any more bumps like that lying in wait for this project, but given the general state of things right now, I can only look so far ahead.
