Hey folks,
 
 Just in time for Gen Con, we are releasing the final version of the Core Rulebook, and the Digital GM's Kit this morning. Be sure to check your inboxes (or your spam folders if you don't see an email from Backerkit), but be advised that Backerkit sends them out in waves, so it may take a little while for everyone to receive their download links.
 
 If you have any trouble with the files, send us an email to [email protected]. We do not get reliable notifications for comments left on the Community section here, so it's not a great way to get our attention if you need assistance.
 
 Enjoy the game, and hopefully we will see some of you tomorrow in Indianapolis! 

Gen Con is happening this week and it’s been petal to the metal this past month getting ready for the show (our biggest of the year). We announced last week that we’ve been working on the 4th edition of our Mutants & Masterminds RPG. At Gen Con and in our webstore we will have a playtest edition of the game, with PDFs available as well. The game’s official launch is next year.

Jonesy has done a great job getting our game events organized this year. We’ve got a dedicated room (121 in the convention center) and there are three Fifth Season games happening. They are currently sold out, but in practice you can often get into games if you show up early with a generic ticket. One or two people ghosting on their games is common at Gen Con. You can find all our events here

We are at booth #101 in the exhibit hall. Here’s a handy map showing our booth and our game room.

The other thing we’ve been doing this month is trying to prevent JP Morgan Chase from stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of our books as part of the Diamond bankruptcy. It’s a long story but basically, we had inventory on consignment with Diamond Book Distributors. While stored in their warehouse, the books belong to us. JP Morgan Chase, the biggest creditor in the case, wants Diamond to sell all their consigned inventory—which again they do not own—so the biggest bank in America can take the proceeds. Over one hundred companies are caught up in this, with many millions on the line. We’ve joined with some of those companies to hire a law firm and fight back. Good lawyers are not cheap, so we started a fundraiser for a legal defense fund. You can find it here if you want to learn more.

Now let me get back to the headache I talked about in the last update: Trump’s tariffs. Deadlines and goalposts keep shifting, but theoretically the latest tariff rates will be announced on August 1. Once we have that info, we can decide where to print Fifth Season. We have quotes from several printers in various countries, and we’ll decide which one to use when we see the new rates.

Hope you’ve been enjoying the game since the PDF release. We will be putting that up for sale publicly in the near future. See some of you next week at Gen Con!

Chris Pramas

And now the news you’ve been waiting for: N.K. Jemisin has given us final approval for the game! This is a major milestone, and we are delighted we can move on to next steps. The approval included the Game Moderator’s Kit, so you’ll be getting a PDF of that this week. You will get an email with a link that will let you download the GM’s Kit from BackerKit. This PDF is for backers only, so please do not share it with others. If you spot any typos or other problems, send them in an email to [email protected].

Our next step is to review your comments on the core rulebook itself, and implement any fixes required. We will follow this same process with the GM’s Kit. Once the files are finalized, we send everything to the printer.

This should be a simple matter, but in 2025 nothing is easy. This administration’s trade war with other countries is creating economic chaos in a way we haven’t had to deal with before. The truth of the tariff situation is that American businesses pay the tariffs, not other countries. If we get hit with a tariff when our books come into port, all that does is increase our costs. We do print some of our books domestically, but that’s generally limited to softbacks. Printing hardbacks is much more expensive in America, which is why companies started printing overseas in the first place. Our GM kits in particular cannot be done domestically at a good price because we hardback the screens, so they are nice and sturdy. Some companies are simply increasing the price of their products to account for the tariffs, but of course in this situation that is not possible because you have already paid for the game. We are certainly not going to ask you to pay extra for something you’ve already bought. That means tariffs come right out of our profit margin.

The other factor here is instability. It generally takes 3-4 months to print something overseas. To plan for tariffs, they need to remain the same for that entire period. If we send something to print when the tariff is 10% but it jumps up to 30% before the job ships, that’s a huge problem for us. In the past six months, the tariffs have fluctuated wildly from week to week. It’s difficult to plan when the situation is so chaotic.

Now we have not been idle here. We’ve been tracking the tariffs and seeing which printers make the most sense. The current threat for July is a potential 50% tariff on the EU as a whole. One of our regular printers is in Lithuania, and at current rates they’d be a reasonable choice. Not if the tariff jumps up to 50% though.

I’m laying all this out now to provide transparency on what we are facing. Do not fear though. We are going to get this job done and you will get your books and screens. We’re just trying to time it right, so we lose as little money as possible to tariffs.

Chris Pramas

Hello backers,

Great news, we’ve gotten permission from N.K. Jemisin to release a preview PDF to you. There are a couple of things that still need sorting, and we need to add the index, but this is the game and you could start playing it tomorrow. A few notes:

Watch out for that email and then dig right in!

Chris Pramas

Hi backers,

We are still in the approvals process for the Fifth Season RPG, so there is not a whole lot to report on right now. Next week we should be sending the book plates to print. We will send those directly to N.K. Jemisin for signature. Once we have a print date for the game, we will put in our order for the dice. We are timing production so everything arrives in the warehouse at roughly the same time. Then it’s picking, packing, and shipping.

Until next month.
Chris Pramas