Updates

If you have backed other projects of ours, you'll be seeing this update more than once; feel free to skip.

We want to begin with an apology for the long silence. Things have been incredibly volatile in the lives of many of our staff, especially that of our project manager who handles all the updates and team coordination.

Things started with multiple hospitalisations in 2024 due to lung issues that were finally determined to be a combination of: acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, lung parenchyma with mild interstitial chronic inflammation and organising pneumonia, with long term hypersensitivity pneumonitis and reactive airway disease. Atop that, a constant high white blood count led to being assigned an oncologist and given a possible leukaemia diagnosis pending a bone biopsy that the oncologist is currently delaying due to other health factors and surgeries happening.

They then endured violence from former housemates in the spring that resulted in a restraining order that said persons then broke to ensure the death of our staffer's senior kitties. For health and safety, our project manager had to move; and then was forced to undertake a second move under incredibly short notice a week prior to having full hip replacement surgery in October due to a breakdown of relationship dynamics. Then there was of course, said surgery, which they are still in recovery from - it takes about a year to return to full functionality but most of the critical healing takes place in the first four months. They are currently safe, but have another (unrelated) major surgery in February and have to move again in March or April when their current housing situation is changing.

On top of this, our layout person for a previous major project became gravely ill and bedridden since July (right after they had begun to work on Keepsakes) - unable to even sit upright due to pain. In August they were diagnosed - stage 4 Cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) - started in the liver and progressed into their spine. September was the start of chemo, but a bad reaction to the first dose landed them in the hospital, and ketoacidosis kept them there for weeks. October and November had them in rehab, and they were finally cleared to go home and resume chemo this month, though they are still not at a point where they can resume work in any manner. We have finally retained a new layout person in the interim, and they are working hard to get Keepsakes into a state where it can be released. 

The Paragon Tarot pins are fully designed and approved, and most have completed production. Our manus are retaining hold of them while we wait and weather through all these tariff changes imposed by the Trump administration on goods coming from China. We refuse to pass those cost increases on to you, but that in turn means waiting longer to ensure we can afford the cost changes. We expect costs to stabilise during quarter one of 2026, and will have our manus ship us the remaining pins at that time. We do have some designs in hand, and will be endeavouring to ship those out beginning January 2026 for those whose orders include only those designs.

We have other projects in the works and in various stages of completion, including other enamel pins, tarot cards, playing cards, and two ttrpg books that went through crowdfunding. The Paragon 5e supplement is nearly completed; we expect it to be ready for release in the first quarter of 2026. The related Paragon tarot deck now has completed major arcana art. Our merch mogul is hard at work on the minor arcana now, but that is a lot of cards so it will likely complete by quarter three of 2026. Troubleseekers ttrpg and accompanying card deck is well underway. The writing and editing is completed, we just await one more piece of interior art and the cover from our artist - who is still helping his children recover from a horrible accident that happened earlier this year - after which it will move to layout. The card deck is with our other artist, who has completed the card back and is working now on the design of the card faces.

And in the meantime, our game designers are participating in some game jams and working on other long term projects. You can find the game jams on itch.io, and new Mhar supplements and a Quickstart Mhar guide over on DTPRG. Our podcast team split apart, but have now retained a new partner and will continue and hopefully grow. Our live stream team is taking a break for the holidays, but we should have further one shots and limited campaigns resuming in 2026.

As a reminder, each of our projects are undertaken by different teams, so new projects have no impact on the progression of past ones. The bottlenecks on fulfilment are the result of delays at other levels, not the development teams.

Supporting our other projects helps support marginalised persons who work with us (neither project management nor upper management are paid, all funds go toward the people who work with us to make these games and accessories and operational costs). 

Hey, all!

Sorry for the delay in updates. Not a whole lot new to report, as the tariff situation is still very volatile, but we expect to have at least a few more of the designs in the mail to us before the end of summer.

After the last update, our project manager spent 3 weeks sick in bed while managing the project for the tarot deck itself (we were funding the remaining card art), followed by recovering just in time to spend a week out of town for Kublacon [which fell on their birthday as well! 45 years!] (and where we saw at least one of you lovely backers in person when you stopped by our table!). After returning home from that, they have had a series of medical appointment follow-ups with their specialists only to learn they need three surgeries this year! Deviated septum (ENT specialist was waiting for their lungs to recover enough to withstand surgery), optic nerve lesion/pit in the left eye (they'll share the imaging from the optometrist below; it's actually on both eye nerves but is currently only dramatically affecting the left eye), and surgery on their left hip (avascular necrosis of femoral head alongside arthritis).

They are home for now, but over the next few weeks will be getting all those surgeries scheduled, so we don't know exact timings on some things until those are on the calendar to plan around. Will try to update monthly as we move forward, as much as health allows us to remember, so don't be afraid to poke in the comments to ask for updates - the reminders are appreciated, given the state of ... well ... *waves hands around* everything.

Here's the eye scans from last week's appointment. left vs right, and last year vs this. You can see the layer separation happening, it's kind of crazy!

The smoke test has been sent out!
As long as those proceed with no hiccups, everyone will have surveys before Easter.

Sorry we have been MIA. Life has been a bit of a shitstorm, including an assault and needing to get a restraining order and have the sheriff remove some violent tenants in our project manager's home. 
Now that things have finally calmed down, we are back to work. We still have to order the pins, as we were unable to do so while there were unstable persons with access to our products, but things are back in process now and we should be able to get everything out by the fall if everything else continues as planned.
You should all see the pledge manager by this weekend! We are putting the finishing touches on now, then it goes to review and the smoke test, then to everyone. :)
We did have a backer choose the custom Kobold, so you all have an extra design to choose from! We will be working with this backer over summer to finalise the design, so unfortunately we won't have a preview of it for you until we get further into this process.
You will see in the add ons that you can also pick up a few of our ttrpgs, a downloadable soundtrack, an STL or 3D print of the elf from The Star card, and a few other odds and ends. Feel free to add these if you're interested! Troubleseekers in particular is quite fun, using a deck of cards to play Blackjack against the GM to resolve actions rather than the more typical rolling of dice.