Welcome to the, somewhat belated, May update. This month’s big news: The Smuggler’s Guide to 1365 is complete—and it’s almost ready for distribution!
Dai submitted the final draft this past Friday, and we had hoped to get it into your hands before the end of May. But after a thorough review, I caught some typos and layout tweaks that still need to be fixed. Nothing major—it should take about a day to address. So, expect your download link to arrive via BackerKit early this Week - likely Tuesday. I can’t wait for you all to see it.
The cover reveal!
What’s Inside the Smuggler’s Guide?
We took this thing way beyond the original scope. I’ve talked about that before—but now that it’s done, I can tell you: it clocks in at 48 pages, cover to cover. That’s just 4 pages shy of Mothership first party legend: A Pound of Flesh.
Here’s what’s packed inside:
A brand-new character class: the Smuggler with D10 custom loadouts.
Robust generators for fences, smuggling runs, and complications.
Guest content from Joel Hines and DG Chapman, including an original "social sandbox" investigation adventure inspired by classic noir and pulp crime stories.
A full setting: The Barge Bazaar—loaded with shady NPCs, sketchy locations, and hooks galore.
Rules, tools, and tables to live out your Han Solo meets Ripley space-noir dreams.
“The Crawlways”—a labyrinth of shafts and access tunnels beneath the Bazaar for PCs to get into deep, dangerous trouble
Zine Aesthetic
Dai drew heavy inspiration from early BBS websites, 1980s hacker zines, and a warm, gritty cassette-future aesthetic that in my opinion pairs perfectly with Mothership. Bold warm oranges and yellows slashed against stark black-and-white layouts—usable, high-impact, and dripping with retro-futurist style.
All the art inside is Dai’s handiwork—a signature collage style built from deep dives into public domain sci-fi archives, mashed together in Photoshop and filtered into beautifully grimy, nostalgic spreads. It’s evocative, it's gameable, and I love it. I hope you do too.
The back cover is also a character class, what?!
Box Set Progress
Beyond the Smuggler’s Guide, Dai is still hard at work on the rest of the box set materials. Progress slowed a bit this month after a serious fever hit his household, but the good news is he’s on his feet and back at it.
We’re aiming to share previews of box set contents and an update on the production timeline in the regularly scheduled June update.
Final Notes
Once you get the Smuggler’s Guide in hand, I hope you tear it apart (in the best way possible)—dig into the generators, mine the Bazaar for story seeds, and start spinning up your next gritty campaign. Since this PDF is still technically a pre-production version, feel free to drop me a line in the comments if you notice any typos or layout issues. We’ll zap 'em before the print files go to press.
Thanks again for backing, reading, and playing and talk soon,
