Hello Ajureans,
March update is still coming later this month, but I need to interrupt this broadcast to bring you Pocketopia!
From one of the Mechanics team members whose...
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Publishing Goblin
about 1 month ago
The February Update & Timeline! | Ajurea Ahead!
Hello Ajureans,
It's Seven here, coming to tell you about what's ahead! For Publishing Goblin, it's actually quite a busy year.
The Goblin's Journey enamel pin and plush ...
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Publishing Goblin
2 months ago
Confluence Full Steam Ahead! | Upcoming projects in Ajurea!
Hello everyone--
Seven here!
The end of December was mostly dead for us, as people took time with friends and family. But the Confluence team is already rapidly at work...
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Publishing Goblin
4 months ago
Surveys Were Sent! | Our Lovely Wait
Hello friends,
I'm Seven, I haven't been around for this campaign much at all, leaving it to the incredible Confluence team. And they had quite capable hands! But now that...
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Publishing Goblin
5 months ago
DICE NOW OPEN!!
7 HOURS LEFT TO BACK!
DICE UNLOCKED EARLY
In our final hours we've decided to open the Dice Stretch Goal early ...
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Publishing Goblin
5 months ago
Day 32 Progress | Last Day! | Update #20
TL;DR
• 12 hours to go!
• About to unlock Smol Inn Reviews at $65k.
• Need about $5k to unlock dice!
• The Team will be streaming on the BackerKit Page a...
March update is still coming later this month, but I need to interrupt this broadcast to bring you Pocketopia!
From one of the Mechanics team members whose work on Confluence ended at the start of the year, we have A Land Once Magic by Viditya Voleti! This worldbuilding game is a small zine that works with a deck of playing cards to put together a world with your friends that is existing after magic has gone away. This wonderful game is already funded (got there in 5 hours of launching!), and is being published by MoreBlueberries.
Viditya was such a fantastic part of our mechanics team, and his contributions to the game are still felt even as we finalize the game without him.
And from Seven, the project owner and original ideator behind Confluence's world and worlds, comes HISTORIC, a grim-dark cardrun TTRPG made for one-shots. This game focuses on your dungeon delves with a party of unique characters, and requires no preparation before sitting down, opening the box, and getting towards play. In a world filled with creatures that want your soul, outride the annihilating sun and dive into dungeons to gain great relics, trinkets, and tools to kill the things lurking in the dark, and someday hold your weapon to the throats of gods.
As part of Pocketopia, these two projects are also partners and are offering bonus cards to anyone who backs both projects for both games.
Alright friends, back to our normal programming. Look for our March update next week.
It's Seven here, coming to tell you about what's ahead! For Publishing Goblin, it's actually quite a busy year.
The Goblin's Journey enamel pin and plush project was cancelled, relaunched, and has finished funding. The HISTORIC: The Road Eternal project goes live March 13th to fund a new game in a box, like ZOETROPE and WHAT WE POSSESS, a grimdark dungeon delver on cards made for one-shots and short campaigns. The Oracle Dice's 3rd edition is May 1st! It will also feature a small story game you can play with the dice. The Goblin's Tarot, a deck that explores the Publishing Goblin's journey through our Confluence world of Ajurea, launches in July. And there is an unannounced (now announced?) comic project about Ajurea for September! And then also, also a project for October or November for a short story collection mostly of stories from my patreon (edited and revised), but a few new ones thrown in for fun.
What a whole thing, huh?
But that's not all, of course. Because here on Confluence, we're going to be heading to manufacturing in August. August!! But let's go one step at a time here.
What Have We Done?
From Laya, our project lead:
Swirling Sea in the Atlas has updates written, heading into edits.
The Inland update will be done by next week AND we are adding a brand new Area in the western section of Motley Coast!
We have 3 of the 10 entries of 10 Things To Do In... Complete (Rockwater Isles, Gravity Isles, and the Color Dome) and are working on 4 more as we speak!
We've taken feedback on Lineages and are giving all 20 new treatment, with more actionable information. Can you believe we have 20 lineages for you to play?? That's so many!
NPC portraits for those who got them are almost all done, and special ephemera for people adding those have been reached out to/that's happening right now!
on the Mechanics Side
Calibration is going to layout, so almost all done.
The Confluence Guide to the Living Archive (main rulebook) is almost complete. In this, we have changed a lot of the language to be more intuitive, changed some of the central rolling mechanics to include the whole table, up'ed the use of Tokens to be more impactful, and yet again changed Wounds.
We've taken a lot of comments on Proficiencies (what we used to call Facets) and are updating them now. They are more integrated with our core mechanics. But don't worry, for those who loved the magic and tech, those haven't lost their individual flair.
The Thread Deck (what used to be called the Focus Deck) has its first round going to Layout next week
... and Module Guest Writers have started their projects!!! We've got mushrooms, midnight trains, and underground adventures!
That's a lot that's happened since December, and we have a lot ahead of us. So what all does that mean?
What is the Timeline?
Physical Copies: to the printer by August 17th. This means we are likely completed on that manufacturing of all items by around the end of September. Then we would move things to fulfillment center in October, and mid-late October and on we would begin shipping things out. For US/Canada/Mexico, we could see items arriving overseas around the end of November/start of December. For Rest of World, they would be coming straight from China and arriving likely a little sooner than North America.
This of course is also dependent on tariffs. We may have to shift manufacturing to another country depending on the dick measuring contest the US govt is engaging in. We will see!
Digital Copies: of the main Books (Atlas, Sujatha's Guide, Confluence Guide to the Living Archive, The Catalog of Lists, So You Want To Build It?, and Calibration) will go out at the end of August, meaning the game will be available to everyone around then/start of September digitally.
All Extra Digital Material: Comic, Smoll Inn Reviews, Modules/Adventures (including the Module Adventure Book, Fatebound's final Act, and Jay Dragon's adventure), will go out the end of September.
Any "Touched" Items: will come when they come. It is likely this will be in January/February of 2026. This is because they have to get to our team members, THEN head out into the world from there.
We are well on our way to completion, and I myself am stepping in to run a game here soon for people and diving in a bit deeper on the editing front. The game is looking incredible, we're so ready to have the final work completed here and get it into the world yet this year even if it's digitally at first then physically just at the end of the year.
For now, this means sit tight, my friends. We are getting all our final work wrapped, touchups here, edits there, and last art to slide in. Then of course, so much of the work lies with Cris, our amazing layout artist. As we get the final versions of things in hand, we will share a few pages here and there.
The end of December was mostly dead for us, as people took time with friends and family. But the Confluence team is already rapidly at work now for the year! (and actually made some choices in meetings around december too!)
Books are getting reorganized. Beta testing information is being internalized and changing how we name and write things! Elements in the Motley Coast are being updated to fit stylistically with how we approached material in regions you Have Not Yet Seen! An internal playtest happened already and we're looking into longform games with our team member's game groups.
Mechanics have been adjusted a bit, as we were told that some of the Facet mechanics (now Proficiencies) felt a bit insular and like a lot to keep track of. For context, all of our player abilities had their own mini-game-like mechanics. So when someone wanted to make use of their Perform, there was a page to read and a little mini game to play, but it often made players feel a bit isolated from allies and took a little to learn and implement. We're making changes to move some of those elements into group rolls known as Story Rolls.
Overall, I think it's safe to say that the team is doing a ton of work to bring the game up to snuff well before we head to manufacturing!
The Playtest
We did a quick one-week playtest in-team, and I got to join!
We were a rough and tumble group of folks who latched onto an ideal that one of us had Pulled by a conflux into their minds-- Danny's character got the movie history of an action and adventure loving teen from Earth pulled into his head, and as a result, we decided to be Cowboys! During our session 0 setup, Lauren suggested the theme of Cowboys, and we all excitedly ran with it to that conclusion.
We were a crew of a Goblin with a past of finding out revenge doesn't make things right, and an exo-suit in the form of a super advanced gun; A cat Bande who was slimy and good at picking locks (that was me); a disgraced Jernang who was our sluicemanta wrangler (our stand-in for horses); and an injured Eye of the Cauldron player who thought this group of outlaws was doing something good for his old small town. And to be fair, we largely were doing good.
We attacked the mayor's party barge and made it into a Stick Up until he signed the deed to the town over to us, because he was abusing that poor town and stealing all its money and resources! We also robbed a bunch of other things on the way, which was pretty delightful, and made friends with the boat's AI, teaching it about how fun it could be to be a cowboy, free to chase the wild blue yonder.
The mechanics were smooth as ever, with quick rolls to determine low stakes, single person actions rapidly, and Story Rolls where we roll dice to use our wits and wiles against the Story Leader's set of dice for the obstacles we must overcome, each taking turns to determine how we applied our skills and succeeded or failed with gusto.
Shubham also got to make use of his character's fun Tensormancy a few times to affect gravity, a really neat way to distract people while others do sneaky things, or to push away bullets so we don't get shot. Appreciated that, Shubham!
For the Moment, Stay Tuned
The team is hard at work with the game system, and I'll be getting a full update in late February on where we're at and how we feel about our timeline then. At that time, you will get some specifics on what's happening in the game system, what things are being added, what might be taken out for now, and what's next!
In the Meantime... More Ajurea!
There are two other Confluence things happening this year to keep people excited! They are both tied to the Publishing Goblin's journey through the world of Ajurea-- the setting for Confluence. The Publishing Goblin is a real creature in this world, who travels around in Workshop, the living, walking home and workshop for the Publishing Goblin's various creations.
Sam Dow, illustrator behind the Gold Normal Tarot deck I reprinted just last year, is handling this journey. The Publishing Goblin is a Fallen God on a journey to accept their mortality and live among the people in the world, rather than separate from them as purely an observer.
The first project launches tomorrow morning! This is an enamel pin project with pins based on Sam's art from the next project. It features enamel pins, a Glamordillo plushie, and a Glamordillo ita bag! So if that's of interest to you, check that out and sign up to be notified on launch. There are limited early bird tiers available!
The second project launches in July, and it's a full Goblin's Tarot about that journey! We have references throughout the deck to the various peoples and lands of Confluence, as well as references to worlds that none of you yet know anything about! From the singers of the god-song from a game unreleased known as A Song the Size of the Universe, to Lords of the Oracle Dice having food truck Indian food with the Pub Gob, to the New Timer revolt in Crop Circle Junction, these lines and sketches for cards in the Goblin's Tarot explore so much of what Ajurea has to offer.
The Goblin's Tarot is a standard 78 card tarot deck, with many cards actually reflecting the standard RWS compositions for their cards. The guidebook will share both card meanings for traditional readings as well as insights into what's happening in the card art in Ajurea.
This tarot deck is being made to be used with games that require tarot decks to run on, and will release alongside a couple games that want tarot decks for their play as well!
And don't let the empty teaser page fool you, Sam has actually finished first passes on every single card in the deck already, and we're now moving to final line work and colors for the full deck. As we creep closer, you'll see more and more of the art, packaging, games to go with, and more!
More quietly, there's also a game project in March for HISTORIC, which takes place in Prosipio, one of the worlds that can be pulled into Ajurea-- plus a small game for TEKET, the sport I invented that exists in Ajurea!
So stay tuned my friends, Confluence has more work ahead of its release and wonderful companion projects to come out along the way!
On behalf of the Confluence Team, 7DA your pub gob
I'm Seven, I haven't been around for this campaign much at all, leaving it to the incredible Confluence team. And they had quite capable hands! But now that the project is done funding, it's my turn to take up the mantle of showrunner for these updates.
So hello! I'm the Publishing Goblin, the person behind the project who paid all these amazing people to recreate this world from my old material. I tried to fund Confluence three times years ago, each time it did rather poorly. I didn't have it right just yet, the system was large and clunky, and I didn't have this amazing team. I was doing it all on my own. So needless to say, I am quite excited to see the project here and now.
Apologies for the radio silence as well, conventions have been quite busy for me and I'm home now, settling in and sighing a sigh of contentment with my good cat, Tom Bombadil, who has missed me ever so much.
Surveys Were Sent
While I was in Philadelphia this weekend, we sent out Surveys to you all! These let you grab extra items if you wanted, put in an address, and get all ready for the future. Now, at this time we are quite a bit from shipping, or manufacturing for that matter. The team has recently gotten back to work on bringing in our Alpha/Beta testing feedback to the game system, layout, and Atlas.
That means we'll be sharing monthly updates from here on as we head toward our manufacturing sometime next year. You will be made aware of our estimated schedule as we go, but our goal is to have games in people's hands in 2025. If in this next year of time you move, no worries-- simply go into your survey and adjust the address. We will be able to do that all the way up to when we head to shipping.
Also a reminder that we haven't added shipping to your orders yet, and that will be done and charged when we're more certain of when we're shipping, and the final weights for all items.
Our Lovely Wait
While we wait, consider showing friends the pre-order store! https://confluence.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders People can put in late pledges here as pre-orders. Please note these are not your surveys, and if you place a preorder it will be separate from your pledge, and thus will charge for separate shipping and ship separately when it happens.
In our final hours we've decided to open the Dice Stretch Goal early so you all have a chance to add your dice without too much of a rush. Come and get them!!
$8 for a set of 6 d6 and $40 for 5 sets of 6 d6
Thank you all so much for making this campaign happen. The team so appreciates all of your support, and we can't wait to get this game to you.
Don't forget to join us for our stream starting at 6:30 PST! We'll be streaming until the Backer Train ends. You can see us here on BackerKit or on our Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@publishinggoblin1072
