This is Nicholas Francia, the lead designer and creator of Eldritch Automata. I’ve written a decent amount of the updates you’ve seen, and most likely we’ve talked if you posted in the community section or on Discord. We have some important news regarding the future of Eldritch Automata that Ian and I want to share with you today. Moving forward, Eldritch Automata will no longer be published by Gehenna Gaming. I’ll hand things over to Ian for a brief explanation of what is going on with Gehenna.

Ian here. As some of you may know, I started Gehenna Gaming over five years ago, and have had a lot of major life changes since, including moving across the country, becoming a father, and taking over as primary caretaker for my partner due to the sudden onset of a long term health issue. Over the last six months, I have come to the realization that I no longer have the time, energy, or means to keep up with Gehenna Gaming and everything that is needed to properly support a project like Eldritch Automata at this time. In order to do what is best for E//A and Nick, and make sure that the game you’ve all been supporting continues to get the time and attention it deserves, I am working with Nick to split Eldritch Automata off from Gehenna, and separate Gehenna from further development of the game and fulfillment of the Backerkit campaign. Nick and I are working behind the scenes to properly hand off all assets so that Nick can fully take over and finish production and fulfillment.

For Gehenna, I’ll be taking an indefinite hiatus while I focus on my career and family. If you’re a member of the Gehenna community, I will share more there at a later date regarding my plans. But back to Nick for now to talk about E//A.

We’ve slowed down on development of the final bits of art and editing until we get this settled, and I’ve separated E//A from Gehenna. All additional supplements we’ve announced or discussed are also paused, as trying to separate these things afterwards provides another layer of complexity. As soon as Ian and I have all the paperwork signed and in place, I will move forward with the release of Titans for digital distribution. 

Writing Progress: 100%

Editing Progress: 50%

Art Progress: All Automata, Horror, and Pilot art is complete, including BackerKit Horrors and Pilots. 

What happens next?

My commitment to finish Eldritch Automata remains our top priority. Ian is working with me to ensure we have a smooth transition. Once the remaining assets controlled by Gehenna have been transferred in my name, we’ll ramp back up to finish the book. Thankfully, as with PAX Unplugged this past year, we will still be running games at various conventions throughout the year through third-party organizations thanks to the dedicated group of GMs we’ve had running Eldritch Automata. Once things are more set in stone, I’ll be happy to show a roadmap to PDF and eventual printing release. All in all, the aim is to release within 2026, the sooner the better. 

How can we keep updated?

To ensure you receive future updates and news, please join our new communications channel. I’ll still be updating through the BackerKit, but if you’d like multiple avenues for discussion and engagement.

In closing this update, the current situation is not where I’d imagined we would be. This is not the outcome any of us envisioned when this journey began. Please understand that as an independent creator, I am navigating this situation alongside you. Despite these setbacks, I remain dedicated to finding a new publishing partner that will be eager to bring the high-quality TTRPG we all deserve to life.

Thank you for your continued patience and support.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Francia, Creator of Eldritch Automata

Nick here to give you the latest on Eldritch Automata. Ian is under the weather, so he couldn't check my update or edit it. So if the grammar sucks, I apologize. We’re keeping things fairly light after our meaty previous update but still want to wet the whistles of those who are chomping for more Eldritch Automata content. We’re going into my favorite month of the year and saying goodbye to Automata summer and saying hello to the fall season. Before we get to the updates; pre-orders are now reopened!

Finally we can say that the manuscript text is 100% complete. The last bits of writing that we were waiting on finally came in from our writers and I can finally call this bird cooked and done in that aspect. It’s exciting to see it all finally together into a single cohesive folder of documents as it’s being tossed to the art director to put the initial layout together. The layout is looking stellar, and we’re hovering around 330 pages for the finished product. Editing for the main book is firing on all cylinders, and it should take us little time to update the layout with the edited text once all is said and done. Once editing is done we’ll have a few of our content readers give it a look over to ensure we haven’t written in potentially inflammatory or exclusionary language. As a writer and a designer, my job is currently done now on the main book. Now I leave it in my art director’s hand to help finish the fight. Currently all art has been allocated space and planned for, so we have no new surprises, no lack of artists. Everything is on the table and we’re turning things up to 11. Our Stress is at a 10, and we’ll need to make a Trauma roll at the end of this encounter. But such is the life of an Automata Author. 

A lot of talk has been discussing when the PDF will finally be released and right now we are on controlled sprints to release the PDF by end of year hitting that 2025 release window with the PDF going to printers right after. So if everything goes to plan, we’ll be looking at a physical release in Q1/Q2 of 2026 with the additional BackerKit items like the Equipment Deck and Dossiers going to print fairly soon after. The soundtrack will be released sometime in 2026, with writing for the campaign book from Storyteller’s Forge and Homecoming beginning in 2026 as soon as Eldritch Automata Core Rulebook goes to printers and we can breathe a little easier. Titans of the Deep is undergoing some finalizations and last minute polish but should be available some time this month. Truly an Operation I am proud of, it will be available for PDF purchase with a print run planned for the future. Titans of the Deep, Homecoming, and Storyteller’s Forge Campaign makes up what’s tentatively called Season 1 of Eldritch Automata, and may include even more projects in the future. With the core rulebook being out, it means we can start working on smaller releases that use the Core Rulebook as the central heart of E//A has a whole.

Thanks to the Backers on the Discord and some of the playtest forms, I've gone ahead and cleaned up and clarified a lot of the languages behind certain Talents and Tags that might have left too many things up into the area for interpretation. Here are specific changes due to revisions of the manuscripts before our final edits.

Danger Close: There has been no gameplay mechanic in this game that has not been combed over as much as the Area tag and the rules for general Explosion. In it's original form, Area was too powerful of a tag and in our pre-release nerf we may have traded off too much damage weakening it severely. As one of the only Cost 3 tags, Area should feel powerful but not game breaking. We have made a slight edit, that will ease the concerns over Area's damage which in turn has changed Explosion. Originally Blast Power had a set dice pool to roll for damage (either 5 or 7), now Blast Power is a static damage (still cannot be improved via Stunts) so that your damage is consistence and fierce even against foes with Ego Fields.

Slowing Down the Arms Race: Weapon balancing has been adjusted, normally your weapons are built with a maximum of 5 points worth of Flaw Tags. Now, your Flaw Tag are set a maximum of 5 for Signature Arms and 3 for Side Arms, lowering the amount of power a Side Arm can do in conjunction with a Signature Arm. This also serves as an indirect nerf to the Legion's power, curtailing them a bit.

Slippery Hands: Grappling is a powerful tag giving a player the ability to lockdown from afar and we believe that setting it at 1 cost might be too low for this. We're upping the cost to 2 to keep it's power at a decent trade off.

Limiting the Ceiling: We never anticipated that someone might take certain tags multiple to an exorbitant amount, so we're giving Accuracy, Ego Degradation, Piercing all now have their tags capped at 3, to stop them from being abused in-game. 

Installing Ego Limiters: Ego Conversion is an incredibly powerful tag for keeping your Ego Field up, and in conjunction with tags such as Swift, we have seen some Automata being able to keep their Ego Field up at max indefinitely with ease. We've now changed this so Ego Conversion instead of redirecting full damage back into your Ego Field now only does a static 1 Ego Field recovery for every successful attack piercing a target's Ego Field.

Sheltered: Put on a Smile can only be used once per scene, you can't infinitely stack your Empathy for Stress.

Empty: Unfeeling has been changed, it now restores all Ego after a Shift of rest. Bad Influence now correctly states Manipulate and Command.

Hedgehog's Dilemma: Growing Pains now only exhausts a Strand instead of breaking it.

Puppeteer: Dark Secrets now says a significant secret.

Forgotten: Blank Space is now properly listed as a required talent. 

Alicia Aguilar exemplified and later would create the concept of what a pilot was. A middle ground between experiencing significant hardships while also being incredibly headstrong. Aguilar had lost her family during Advent Day and had survived multiple encounters with Horrors, within events since Advent Day pushing her towards isolation. Aguilar managed to achieve unprecedented synchronization in the initial tests. When she interfaced with Genesis, the system roared to life. The Anathema was able to connect the two and the first connection with the Automata was established. We understood that Aguilar was able to succeed not despite her trauma but partially because of it. She had experienced the past dissolution of everything she knew already and when it came to merge her consciousness and reject reality all-together she had already healed her scars in exactly the right way. To understand loss but to have been able to move with loss still in tow. They needed not healthy psychological profiles but resilient ones. The unofficial motto of the pilots soon became “The broken become gods”. Not spoken with pride but understanding. 

With a pilot successfully chosen, Genesis was ready for a test drive. The world governments stood at a standstill as their first anti-Horror weapon had been developed. But now it was time to test man-made infinity against the world. Aguilar could only interface for short periods of time, initial merges only allowing her three minutes before the stress on Ego got to be too much. But with each synchronization attempt within the Ego Chamber, Aguilar was able to push the past records of her time more and more. Seven minutes, then twenty, and finally even a full hour before collapsing from exhaustion. Aguilar reported feeling a distinct “other” connected to her. She could only passively glean its emotional state and intentions but surmised that whatever it was. It felt caged and wanted to be let out. Soon Genesis made its first movements with thick steps of metal it cascaded outside into the desert declaring its existence Aguilar and Genesis roared. Each outing in Genesis it was observed that Aguilar had begun experiencing different effects of the strain. Strange dreams, becoming more highly reactive and malleable to the Anathema, feeling sick without daily exposure to Genesis. The concerns of Aguilar and Genesis were noted but it couldn’t be helped. What the world needed to see was a dead Horror. 

Aguilar piloted Genesis in the first battle among several Horrors. The combat capabilities of Genesis were admirable, but Automata was bulkier, it was slower, and more vulnerable to being overwhelmed than a faster vehicle. Genesis sustained significant damages but had successfully managed to clear out a small Horror nest all by itself. 

Operation Crescendo would be most of civilization’s first time hearing about the Automata project. Deployed among a major hub of civilization, Genesis was set to engage a large Horror that had nested within a largely abandoned Santiago, Chile. The intention was to clear the Horror presence out completely and return civilians and government to the city. This major deployment revealed both the peak of the Automata Project but also its shortcomings, Aguilar piloted with record high Ego Synchronization rates. Genesis engaged into a drawn out engagement with the skyscraper sized Horror and a small pack of Horrors. Genesis took heavy damage but scored a decisive victory over the Horrors, wrenching the nest’s alpha into two and sending the pieces of its corpse hurdling into the nearby mountain range.
 
During this time Genesis had pushed Aguilar to their limit before the boundary between Aguilar and Genesis gave way, completely revealing the true devastation of the Automata. Genesis ignored all orders instead tearing through the city and annihilating with extreme measures every Horror it could find. When the battle was over Genesis had bathed most of Santiago into a rubble filled inferno. Not only was the city not fit to hold a proper population anymore, but Aguilar fell deep into a coma. Yet, even still the Automata arms race was underway to create more of these unstoppable Horror killing machines. 

Ok, so this is going back on something I stated previously. I didn’t think that a Solo Mode was possible in Eldritch Automata, I didn’t think it fit the themes of the game especially with Strands. To be honest, it really doesn’t. A big part about Eldritch Automata is about levying your personal relationships to push yourself beyond limits and I felt like a solo mode really took away from that. I recently read Free League’s new Alien Evolved Edition, and saw the Lone Survivor mode they’ve added for solo play. There are some decent bones there to start as a base, so with my writing duties done on the main book I’m throwing myself into writing a solo-option mode that’s loosely taken shape in my head. This is by far one of the most requested features for Eldritch Automata and for the people who don’t have a full party, this is for you. The additional ruleset will most likely be released sometime next year alongside a compatible adventure I’d like to write for it specifically. Right now the working title is Lone Wolf mode which is partially inspired by the apt mentioned Lone Survivor mode from Alien Evolved Edition and Halo Reach’s final mission also titled Lone Wolf which gives the last stand vibes I want to evoke with this mode. Lone Wolf is a mode meant for short and gusty dives into Eldritch Automata, their about the final mission and the last stands of being an Automata Pilot. As of right now that also means there is no planned support for the Operations Admin in the Lone Wolf mode and strictly working with the pilots. 

My principles of writing for Lone Wolf are laid out as such; 

Look forward to more information on Lone Wolf mode in 2026. 

Due to our commitment to finish the book amidst other important changes, Gehenna Gaming has decided not to do PAXU or any future planned events currently. There are a few online events with former Gehenna GMs running games of their own volition that I have given my blessing that will be running at the end of the October month, so please if you haven't gotten to play the game stay tuned for those events being announced very soon.