As promised in our November Newsletter from Monday, we are releasing The Color Dome and Calibration to our Backers! If you are not a Backer, and trying to decide if you want to pre-order, some of the content released to our Backers can be found in our Discord.
Our Backers can expect The Color Dome as a complete Area this week! Our Lead Artist Shan Bennion is doing some final touchups on the art and then it will be on its way.
The Gravity Isles have moved through copy editing and markup, the ephemera is complete, and our layout artist Cris is putting it all together.
Project C-1019 is officially in production. We expanded the material earlier this year and now it's getting a bit more of a facelift by Sean D’souza.
Rockwater Isles is being taken up by Laya Liebeseller. It’s already gone through a developmental edit, and is on its way to line editing before the end of the year!
In Sujatha’s Journal:
Fallen Gods, Ajmniea, Alfira, and Bacha Lineages are all well into development.
Fallen Gods have been given to our layout artist.
Ajmniea and Alfira are going through some final editing.
Bacha have just begun with their first draft!
Working on Project C-1019 means the Chell and El’ell have officially moved into production.
In the world of mechanics:
The next draft of Calibration has been sent to our Backers! It still needs some information like examples of our character journals and group sheets, but the text is finalized and laid out!
The CGLA is going through a Line Edit and the in-progress document will be shared on our Discord in January!
Character Journals and Group Sheets are being worked on actively right now. We’ve met and ideation has begun. We’ll be using the CGLA to build out a Group and set of Characters for our layout artist to use to make our sheets.
Through the last couple of months Laya and Sylvan have been working on how to standardize Proficiencies and have completed an internal document called The Anatomy of a Proficiency which gives our designers more direction in building. Sylvan has officially started the redraft of both Conversationalist and Cooking!
Adventure Modules:
Brighton: A Gravity Isles module that focuses on small town politics and cult mysteries is through its first Developmental Edit.
Reviewing our Form: We have two forms of modules, one that builds out a location more fully and one that provides an act-based adventure. We are reorganizing our location modules for readability with the help of our editor Lauren Maddox.
Other Material:
Four Smol Inn Reviews have gone through editing.
All Gambling Dens are in editing and will be sent out to our Patreon subscribers in early December.
All Fishing Spots are in editing and will be going out to our Patreon subscribers in early December.
Laya Liebeseller has begun the writeups for our mechanical histories, starting with character sheets. Readers will have access to the old character sheets we made through the years of Confluence development.
In early to mid-January we are set to send out the following in-process documents as a package:
Calibration
The CGLA
Character Journals and Group Sheets
2-4 Proficiencies
2-4 Lineages
Area: The Color Dome
Area: Gravity Isles
Brighton - location module in the Gravity Isles
We will be sending the packet out directly to Backers via email.
Although we will not be doing another official playtest, we will be sharing some of these documents in the playtesting Discord server, should anyone wish to play around with the updated material.
Eerie Games is in need of more time for the Act One of the Fates of Those Who Dream. Although both of these games are important to us, life outside the work does take precedence.
Laya and Scott are working together to see what can be done given the current circumstances. The folks here at Confluence and Eerie Games appreciate your patience. We’ll have an updated timeline as soon as possible.
Did you know we have a community Discord? Join today!
You can still pre-order Confluence! Backers will enjoy early access to content as we complete it over the next year.
The Color Dome: Our layout artist got terribly sick in August and so there have been delays on the Color Dome. However, it is extremely close to finishing. As soon as it’s ready we’ll be emailing the PDF out to our Backers and posting it in our discord.
The Gravity Isles have gone through their final major edit and are on to copy, markup, and layout this month. The team working on it has unfortunately had several family emergencies and a house fire, so there are again delays.
Motley Coast City which we ideated last month is officially in production. It is more than doubling in size with expanded material focused on districts, and a new section for those who like to play with the black market.
Project C-1019 is officially in production. We expanded the material earlier this year and now it's getting a bit more of a facelift by Sean D’souza.
In Sujatha’s Journal:
As you will see later in this newsletter, we’ve added some new faces. Rainer W. Dalton is working on Sujatha’s Journal and has some fresh ideas to make it even more player forward. We’ll have more updates in November and December.
In the World of Mechanics:
The CGLA has had its final major round of editing. Thank you in particular to our playtesters over the last two years, we couldn’t have done it without you.
Calibration is now going through its final edits post layout!
Character Journals and Group Sheets are going into review and production in November.
With a new member to mechanics, Sylvan Lawrence, we are finalizing how we want Proficiencies to function, giving us a solid way forward for the bulk of the Catalog material. You can expect to see some Proficiencies posted in the discord by the end of the year.
Adventure Modules:
Brighton: A Gravity Isles module that focuses on small town politics and cult mysteries has a first draft complete and is in editing.
The Museum of Good Fortune: A Chrona module that focuses on exploring a museum with strange objects is in editing.
The Thousand Shrines: A module that explores the shrines of the Fallen Gods is just missing its third act.
Other Material:
Four Smol Inn Reviews have gone through editing.
Eight Gambling Dens have been written up and are getting edited now.
Scott (from Eerie Games) and Laya (from the Confluence Team) have been working diligently on the Fates of Those Who Dream. Laya had a death in their immediate family, and so production is taking longer than expected. Scott is working on finalizing our previous drafts.
We should still get this adventure out in November.
There have been some questions posted about the timeline from our backers.
As we announced in August we are now set to send our material to the printer by the end of next year, 2026. It was a really hard decision to make this decision, but with our current team’s bandwidth, even including the new folks, it’s not possible to do it any faster.
Because of circumstances out of our control, our entire team from the Project Lead down are working extremely part time hours, and many of the original team members have had to step away. The team is absolutely dedicated to completing this project. We love it, and we want to make sure we give you work we are proud of.
The team is working towards handing our backers an updated version of the core book (the CGLA), a completed copy of Calibration, a handful of Proficiencies, Specialties and Callings, and at least two completed Areas (the Color Dome and the Gravity Isles) in early January.
We thank you for your patience and understanding.
We have several new team members joining to help us complete work across the project. We decided to bring on new folks to give us some fresh eyes on our material, breathe some new life into the work, and help us complete these final stages. We appreciate them greatly.
We’ll be sharing them on our socials over the coming weeks so you can follow them and find out more about their work!
Rainer W. Dalton Rainer is joining our editing team for both world and mechanics material, remodeling Sujatha’s Journal, and is slated to write the So You Want To Build It? zine.
Sean D’souza Sean is joining under our Creative Director Shubham to work on our world material. He’ll be helping us update our Areas, write Sujatha’s Journal, and maybe even throw in an adventure module if we can convince him.
Sylvan Lawrence Sylvan has come in to help us with our mechanics, focused on our Catalog. Exactly the job for a librarian.
V.J. Harris V.J. Harris, who we worked with before during our Backerkit campaign, is joining us to help us with our modules and a few other odd jobs. You might see them credited on editing, writing, and marketing by the end of things.
Did you know we have a community Discord? Join today!
You can still pre-order Confluence! Backers will enjoy early access to content as we complete it over the next year.
Mostly copy pasting from our newsletter here, but wanted to apologize for not updating in August. If you're in any of my other projects, you probably saw that I was super ill for 3 weeks and lost most of August to that and hospital visits. I'm all good now, but it has been a bit of catchup in the time since!
As noted last time, due to losing members of our team over the last year, we have brought in new team members! There are already 4 new people on the project now, with more potentially coming. We will introduce them in the October newsletter and update!
Areas in the Atlas:
The Color Dome is almost through layout and will be shared in October
The Gravity Isles are almost through editing
The Motley Coast City expansion is through ideation; we’ll be writing soon
In Sujatha’s Journal:
Fallen Gods are in layout
Alfira, Ajmniea, and Bacha are all being edited
In the World of Mechanics:
The first batch of the Thread Deck is being edited; it will be ready in October
Calibration is getting its final copy edits
The CGLA is in for another round of editing with further work on Threads and Wounds
We are still on track to have material to the printer by the end of 2026. Perhaps sooner with our new team members!
As you may remember from the July Newsletter, we’ll be releasing content as it is complete (or mostly complete) to our Backers, and in our Discord. Yet in September, we’ll be sharing The Color Dome, an Area of the Atlas and Calibration.
During our Backerkit campaign, we partnered with Eerie Games and their game Fatebound. We are writing an adventure that combines our systems: one part of the party plays students in Fatebound, while the others play Walkers in Dream from Confluence.
This adventure will be released in three acts. Act 1 is coming soon in late October or early November, just in time for Fatebound to get printed. It will be largely focused on the Fatebound characters and in the style of Fatebound. We have art for Act 1 and the adventure’s illustrated cover, as well as the majority of Act 1 written and ready.
Act 2 and 3 will be released next year. We’ll have more updates soon. For now, enjoy the sneak peek of the cover by our Lead Artist Shan Bennion.
Since we have not been able to keep up with Patreon, we will be pausing our Tiers in December. Kofi Tiers are being paused now. Between now and December, we’ll continue to release backlogged content on Patreon. The Patreon and Kofi will still get Newsletter updates, and you will still be able to do one time donations via Kofi after December. But our full focus is just on the game and getting it complete!
In exciting news, some new folks are coming to help us finish up Confluence. We’ll have new team member introductions in the October Newsletter.
Did you know we have a community Discord? Join today!
