One day of AwesomeCon is down, and tonight I'm running demos of FSHS.
The pledge manager is finished and I've sent out the "smoke test" which helps ensure that everything is working as intended. Following that test period, surveys for everyone else will be sent out on Monday.
I won't be locking addresses or anything until I have zines in hand, ready to send out. So, even if your address is up in the air in the short-term, please go ahead and fill out the survey as soon as you can.
Playtesters! You should have access to draft star charting rules in your digital rewards space. They also add some alternate wormhole procedures and I'd love to hear what you think of that. I'm also working on another complex table that's focused on sticking around in a hex for an extra turn or more. Thanks for that feedback! It's a great idea, and I'll toss it up for you all to look at when it's draft-complete. In the meantime, love to hear your thoughts on how the star charts are modeled and if/how it addresses your various desires for more hex-crawl feels.
Thank you all so much. Everyone who backed, everyone who visited the page to see, and everyone who read through it and decided this game wasn't for them. I am deeply appreciative.
So: let's quick go over the next steps! I've got a bunch of work to do to set up the pledge manager. I've also still got some star chart info to send out and playtest before doing a closer read of the playtest notes and doing revisions on the manuscript. Playtester-level backers: if you haven't submitted feedback yet, there is STILL TIME, and new bits coming to look at!
I don't remember if I mentioned this, but my glasses broke about a month ago, and the new ones are finally scheduled to show up TODAY. And the portions of my daily life that have anything to do with reading are a solid degree more difficult. Tape, glue and janky repairs have gotten me only so far.
In other news, I'm going to be attending the AWP Conference & Bookfair in Baltimore, MD this week March 4-7th, and running games at AwesomeCon in Washington, D.C. March 13-15th. If you're attending either of these events, feel free to ping me on the socials (@games.mothspire.com or @ogreteeth.com on BlueSky).
So, in between all these things, I'm going to be pretty heads-down in pledge manager preparation, revisions, editing, and layout. I'm aiming to have the pledge manager finished before AwesomeCon, and be shipping PDFs and placing the order for books by April 1.
I'll keep checking in to let you know how things are going, and if anything new crops up. Until then, see you in space!
This last poll has been absolutely unequivocal. More than 30 votes for an uncensored option, and none against.
Good enough for me. There is now an option for an uncensored version pledge level, same price, same details. Feel free to switch now or you'll also be able to change it up in the pledge manager later.
I've had a bit of a hectic week, what with weather-planning in the northeastern US. And it's time for one more big update before we wrap!
I have gotten a new batch of stickers and they're really fun. I'm really looking forward to sending them out.
FSHS Sticker
I've also finally had some time to work on some of the feedback from the playtesters who definitely were looking for more hexcrawler-type rules. And so I've been working on making the star chart rules I'd clipped for the preview edition more usable and complete. I've definitely got some additional work to do based on usability feedback and some additional tables to write for different contexts.
I'm so grateful to the playtesters who banged on these rules and sent in feedback (P.S. folks at the playtester backer level, if you haven't yet had a chance to respond to the questions or make your thoughts known, there's still time to do that! I'm still gonna be working on this for at least another week or two. I'll also be emailing y'all an early version of some new focused rules to check out.)
And at least one person has inquired about an uncensored edition, so: poll time again! Is this interesting to you? I might be enticed to do a short run if folks are interested. Poll is open through the end of the campaign and maybe a little longer.
Gosh I super-appreciate y'all who have backed at the play tester level! (and everyone else too, don't get me wrong, but they're doing a bang-up job of making sure I'm delivering the best-possible version of the game I promised).
I had taken a small piece of writing about making a hex map out of the preview and playtest PDFs of the game, since it hadn't been especially well-developed or wondered if it wouldn't work too well... And it seems that was a mistake. Most all the feedback after one week makes mention of this aspect. So, that's definitely going to go back in and will get further developed, along with some new ideas I've had for how wormholes ought to work.
I'm going to try and put together a quick manuscript preview of my ideas around the hex map rules this week and will add those to the playtest documents for y'all at the playtester level to check out.
At the 600% milestone I also promised a sneak tease of the page I'm making for the big collaborative zine we're all doing for ZineTopia.
Zine page teaser
It's a solitaire card game that I've had around for a while, but didn't otherwise have a home. It's not extra content for *this* game, but there's a ton of interesting little things folks have put together for their own games and lots of stuff that's readily transportable to any other game!
In a bit of bad news, the stickers I ordered seem to have gotten porch-pirated. I won't have trouble replacing them, but hopefully I can get some credit back from shipping insurance or whatever.
We've got ten days to go, and I'm looking forward to these next steps to bring you this game!
