Good morning!

Well, the campaign is over. Three weeks of crowdfunding always feels like an eternity to me, and despite knowing we’d funded on day one it never quite feels real until that clock stops ticking and everything ends. But we did it, and this game is going to be a reality. You helped raised an astonishing £8,587 to bring Blood In The Margins to life.

I can’t even begin to explain how grateful I am. That represents a credit card paid off and at least a couple of months where I don’t need to worry about bills. It also means I can pay my editor - and I really like being able to pay the people who help me make my books the best they can be.

If you missed out of the campaign, don’t worry! Late pledges are now open. (They’re only around for a limited time, so don’t wait.)

BackerKit will take about 14 days to disperse the funds to me, at which point I’ll be able to order the print run. You can expect surveys at around that time, and I’ll also be able to send out digital copies then, too. (I can’t do it earlier because some payments might not go through etc.)

Printing usually takes about 2 weeks. Once I have the physical products in hand I’ll be able to calculate accurate shipping rates. At that point I’ll open the pledge manager, collect shipping, and start getting the books in the post to you. All being well, physical fulfilment will begin in early May and will be completely finished by June.

I’ll keep you updated throughout the process. You’ll know when the files go to the printer, you’ll know when the books arrive in my house, and you’ll know when shipping starts. 

In the meantime, I’m going to take a couple of weeks to rest (and get the layout finished!) while I wait for BackerKit to send me the funds. The next time you hear from me it will be when that money arrives and the print run has been ordered.

Thanks again for all your support.

See you in two weeks!

-Chris

It’s been a week since the campaign ended. I don’t know where that time has gone.

Firstly I want to say thank you again. It’s been a few years since my last crowdfunder and I didn’t know how this was going to go. Money is tighter for everyone now that in was a few years ago and I’m very grateful that you’ve chosen to spend yours with me.

Speaking of money, BackerKit will be continuing to collect payments for the next week. If your payment has failed, you have until April 17th to update your details to ensure that you get your rewards. Sometimes banks will automatically reject charges from BackerKit as being suspicious, so you may need to let your bank know to mark it as safe. 

If you need to update your details with BackerKit, here’s a handy-dandy list to help you do that.

And you’re done! 

The timeline I laid out last week is still on track. Once payments have cleared I’ll send out surveys, send the books (and bookplates!) to print, and get digital rewards delivered to you. I’ll update you at each stage of that process, so keep an eye out for information over the next couple of weeks.

Obviously everybody is worried about tariffs. It seems like books will be exempt from this nonsense (though that of course could change at any moment) and every part of this campaign is being produced in the UK, so I don’t think tariffs will have any meaningful impact on us. We’ll see what changes over the next couple of weeks, I suppose.

That’s all for now!

-Chris

P.S. Don't forget that if you missed the campaign you can make a late pledge at the pre-order store.

It's the evening here in Manchester and my cat will be demanding that I go to bed soon, which means I'll be busy giving him his treats and putting the house to sleep when this campaign ends in a little under an hour.

I'll have more of an update tomorrow about timelines for getting the PDF in your hands and what print fulfilment will look like, but for now I just wanted to say thank you for your support. I didn't expect this campaign to raise almost 10x as much as my initial goal, and I'm very grateful. Blood In The Margins is a game I'm very excited about, and I wouldn't have been able to make it without your support.

Thank you very much.

-Chris

Hi everyone!

We're into the last few days of the campaign now, and I'm hard at work getting the layout finalised so that I can get this book in your hands as soon as physically possible. Today I want to show you some of the things that changed during the course of the writing of this game, as well as giving you a playable preview of the book to check out while the campaign wraps up.

Before we get to that, there are a few projects I want to shout out. The first are my amazing campaign partners over at GAST. Their support behind the scenes during this campaign has been incredible, and it's been great to see them do so well. I know many of you are already backing both projects, but if you want to make sure you get the free bookplate you should definitely go and show them your support.

The second is being run by my friends at Beyond Cataclysm, and Patrick Buechner of The Soloist, both of whom have been big supporters of my work in the past. This one's over at Kickstarter, where they're raising funds to Solo Borg, a new set of solo rules for Mörk Borg. The project looks really cool, and I'm happy to see it fund so quickly!

A few of you have asked for a way to add additional print copies of Blood In The Margins to your pledges. These will be available in the pledge manager after the campaign ends anyway, but I've gone ahead and created an add-on for a second copy if you want to add one to your pledge now. 

Now let's talk about the development of the game a little, shall we? Traditional Wretched & Alone games contain 52 card prompts, one for each card in a standard deck of cards. Each suit represents a different facet of the game world. In The Wretched, for example, the suits represent the ship's systens, the ship's physical structures, the crew you lost, and the creature itself.

Blood In The Margins still follows this format, but the new three act structure means that the game contains a whopping 156 card prompts - a full set of prompts for each act. You absolutely won't see all of these prompts during play, but they're there and waiting for you.

As the acts change, so too do the things that each suit represents. Act 1 explores the crime you committed, developing your character and the nature of what you did. Act 2 represents the closing net, the web of the investigation drawing in, your rising paranoia. Act 3 is, of course, your unravelling. As the focus of each act shifts, the card prompts will help us hone in on the things that are important to each act.

My initial prompts for Act 1 focused on your motivation (Spades), the victim (Hearts), the consequences of your actions (Clubs), and the method of your crime (Diamond). But I realised after writing all the prompts that I hadn't given you any way to actually define the setting and explore the academy itself - a fairly important facet of dark academia!

Cue draft two, where I rearranged the suits to make space for this new addition to the game. Clubs and Diamonds were rolled together into one suit (Diamonds, now) that explores the crime in general, and Clubs took on the roll of defining the Academy itself. In doing so I went through all of the Clubs and Diamonds prompts I'd previously written and selected the best ones to form the new suit. This means that a lot of prompts got left on the cutting-room floor, but I think the game is better as a result of it.

If you'd like to take a look at what the prompts looked like originally, feel free to take a peek at this Google doc. And if you want to see the prompts that formed the new Clubs suit, read on...

(Of course, you can only read on if you've backed the project. So please go and do that!)