Thanks so much for all your support! We'll be in touch soon about what happens next (and I think Maz is writing a big post about the current US tariff trash fire), but for now we're going to take a bit of a break. Thanks again – I'm so happy that we're able to do this together!

Best wishes,
Mina

This month’s title is broadly applicable to a lot of things, but I chose it because we’ve done a load of work on the Burn This City notebook.

Voidheart Symphony is queued behind one of our other books for editing. That book’s proved to be a bigger technical challenge than we expected, which means it’s taken longer to do. It’s worth the wait: when in-house editor extraordinaire Maz is ready to tackle it, we’ll get a thorough layout review as part of the deal, to make sure all these bold graphic design choices pay off.

Shifting the timeline would mean, in theory, that we should start shipping books out to you in December. Since packages have a greater tendency to get lost, banged around, etc. over the holiday season we’ll probably just… wait until January.

Still in editing.

While the core manuscript’s in editing, Minaerva has been working on the other material. Primarily this month, that’s meant the Burn This City notebook. We’ve been bouncing ideas around, balancing structure (that helps you use the notebook the way we think you will) against freedom to use it however you want to. We’re pleased with the result, and I’m extra pleased with Mina’s decision to design it so that, as far as possible, complete sections are on the front and back of a page - so if you want to cut them out and keep them separately, you can do that.

The pages above are a spread from the rebel part of the book (in blue) and the architect side (in red). Take notes about NPCs, the progress of the rebels' investigation into the latest castle shard, and manage your antagonists and their goals. Why is the architect side upside down? Because you flip the book to read it: each section starts from a cover and works in, so the architect side is, well, upside down.

OK, I may be overselling it a little bit there: this isn't quite a playable version. But we do have a gift for you!

Shortly after this backer update goes out, I’m going to upload some digital files to Backerkit:

If you’ve already done your survey, you should get immediate access to all these files. You may already have them, depending on when you read this. If you haven’t done your survey, consider this a reminder it’s worth doing!

Bye for now.

Chant

Everything’s going to plan. Which is suspicious, frankly.

Really short and sweet update here: we’re still on track. 

As scheduled, Mina’s finished the rewrites. We’ve officially moved Voidheart over to editing, which in-house Editor In Chief Maz Hamilton will handle. Maz is tremendous: their editing’s like a deep tissue massage, in that it’s very firm, very thorough, and extremely good for you. We’ve left time in the schedule for them to give Voidheart Symphony the full treatment (even though it’s been development edited twice already; I never say no to more editing). 

The book’s on track but the pledge manager’s slightly delayed. Bad producer. Sorry. It’s all set up, we’ve sent out the smoke test to a handful of backers, and I’ll check the data and send the rest of the surveys on 19th May.

The nice thing about having an award-winning graphic designer as an author is that the book’s not only written, it’s laid out and ready for public viewing.

This month, we’re showing off the Kick in the Door chapter. Kick in the Door’s one of the biggest revisions to the original Voidheart Symphony, without being completely new. Mina’s pulled together rules and gameplay advice into a chapter that works almost like a quickstart, giving new Architects a step-by-step, learn-as-you-play way to start running Voidheart. It’s not quite zero prep (we do advise reading the rules first) but it’ll get you up and running real fast. 

Pick up your preview here: 

Bye for now!
- Chant

The dust has settled from the somewhat dramatic conclusion to our crowdfunder, and we can see the road ahead. It’s actually a pretty spectacular view: Mina’s close to finishing the new material, we’ve got our editors lined up, and we don’t think tariffs are going to screw us too badly.

Read on for slightly more detail on what’s happening when, and what you can expect over the next few months.

Famous last words, eh?

Delivering Voidheart still won’t take long, but it will take a couple of months longer than we thought. The stretch goals added a bit more writing, which adds a bit more editing, and there will be two stages of editing as Grant Howitt shouts “MORE GAME! BIGGER! SPIKIER! WEIRDER!” and then Maz Hamilton gently sculpts the results into a book people can use. I (Chant) am really keen to hold time for Mina to keep experimenting with layout. Oh, and global freight takes a really long time. 

All told, our timeline currently looks like this: 

(And, given recent events, we think it’s wise to  leave a couple of extra months in the timeline in case of unexpected tariffs, or lack of tariffs, that make global trade more complicated even than it normally is.)

We’ll be setting up the pledge manager by the end of April and sending out surveys in early May. We’ll charge shipping as late as we possibly can - probably once the books are in our warehouses on multiple continents and ready to send out to you.

Most backers’ payments have already been collected; a few failed (which is very normal for any crowdfunding project). Backerkit will keep trying to take payment until April 17th. If they haven’t succeeded by then, you’ll still receive your survey but it’ll show you as having paid $0 and you’ll be asked to pay in pledge manager.

It is impossible to say how much new US tariffs will affect any TTRPG project that is currently underway. That’s because the tariffs are currently changing daily. So we reserve the right to revise our estimates of just how bad this could get as the situation develops. 

However, based on our current understanding: 

In other words, nothing we’ve heard yet changes our plans for Voidheart. We do think shipping’s going to get expensive this year, because there’s a lot of competition to move goods as fast as possible before tariffs get even more unpleasant (and currently to take advantage of the 90 day window before they come into effect). If we’re right, we will have to pass at least some of the cost of shipping on to you. It’s too early to say how much, and we will of course keep shipping as affordable as we possibly can while still ensuring your books get to you in a reasonable time, and in good condition.

We don’t do a lot of manuscript previews for our crowdfunding, but this one’s going to be a little different. Mina’s graphic design is experimental, and the new content is both exciting and conveniently formed into bite-sized pieces: new hideout rules, new playbook, overhauled digital playbooks, and so on. So expect plenty of behind-the-scenes updates, and opportunities for feedback, as we progress towards a finished book.

That’s already a lot of logistical info for one update, so I’ll stop there. From this point on, Mina or I will send updates roughly once a month to help you keep on top of what’s happening and share some little design treats.

Talk to you next month! 

Chant

20 hours to go and I'm feeling optimistic about that AP stretch goal! But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Instead, I'm going to talk about the members of your revolution that you don't get to play – your contacts and your covenants with them.

If you've played previous versions of Voidheart Symphony, you'll know that only a part of your abilities come from the playbook your rebel is using – the rest come from your relationships with other people, and specifically the relationships you've invested with occult significance and turned into covenants. Your crew covenant is your most reliable of these; you're already holding up your side of the bargain by committing to a new target, and so your crew covenant starts each investigation intense and ready to use. This revolution won't go far if it's only limited to your crew, however. That's where contacts come in.

What are contacts? Simply put, they're NPCs – characters controlled by the Architect or the group, instead of any individual rebel player. But it's more than that: every contact is someone your rebel has met, someone who might be interested in and useful to your revolution. They might be someone you meet while fighting the vassal in the city, a recovering victim or repentant minion of a vassal, or a chance connection your rebel makes when you Let Your Hair Down or Connect with someone. Contacts don't offer you powers just yet, though: first you'll need to perform the ritual to form a Minor Covenant.

This ritual is key to breaking your contact out of the mindset the castle wants to force on them, and convince them to put their faith in the new world you're building. It's pretty simple to do: you hang out and get comfortable with them, and then just ask them what they most need right now. The magic is that they'll tell you truthfully and honestly, asking you for something that – in the castle's paradigm – would be way too big or risky or weird to ever ask for. They've done their part, and now it's your turn. You put in the work to get them what they need, even as their internalized castle-mindset subconsciously warps reality to make it harder than you might have expected. Break through that barrier, meet their needs, and you've broken their chains and showed them that a better world is possible. That's when the real magic happens.

As a side note, this ritual is pretty much completely new to Voidheart Revised. I've never been completely comfortable with the idea that you can draw power from a contact without them having an inkling of what you were using the power for. In this new version of the game, every contact you have a major covenant with is aware of your shadow revolution, and has invested their hopes and dreams into your bond.

Major covenants are potent sources of power, each giving a unique kind of strength. To group these bonds, the book uses the major arcana of the tarot: a Wheel of Fortune bond lets you navigate life's ups and downs, a Chariot bond helps you get places fast, a Moon bond taps into the power of nightmares. Still, I'd encourage you to tweak them at the table so that your Sun covenant is distinct from another player's, even if that's just tweaking how the powers look in the story.

Your access to this power is contingent on the contact having faith and trust in you – you can't take these people's support for granted. That's why each major covenant starts the investigation faded. This isn't because they suddenly hate you, but because maintaining that level of investment in a relationship is hard. It's on you to Check In with the contacts whose covenants you want to access and intensify the relationship by spending time with them. That comes with benefits, as every major covenant also comes with a Hangout Move that triggers when you spend time with them: the Sun offers you answers to your questions, the Magician teaches you new skills, the Oracle shows you your city's hidden beauty.

Another side note: this also helps players keep their options at a manageable level instead of starting each investigation with half a dozen or more powers to juggle. You can pick which covenants you want to 'activate' in the early days of the investigation, letting you decide on a build that's useful for this particular vassal.

Once a covenant's intense, you can call on its powers during this investigation. At the base level, its City Move and Castle Move give you powers you can call on for as long as it's charged up. For example, the Gardener lets you nurture and heal your allies in the city, while in the castle it lets you consult the accumulated wisdom of everyone who has ever cared for you. Beyond that, intense covenants are also a useful safety net – if a roll goes badly, you can fade any of your intense covenants to re-roll the dice, though you open the contact up to danger if you do so. Similarly, a charged-up crew covenant lets you lend you dice to other rebels when you act in concert, vastly boosting your chance of success. Particularly important relationships can become committed, letting you exhaust them twice before they're fully faded.

Finally, it's not just your intentional actions that can affect covenants. As you end a session, you look over each covenant's 'nurture' and 'betray' triggers, seeing if anything you did might have affected your relationship. Even if the contact was never on-screen, your perseverance against great odds might have intensified your Strength covenant – or your willingness to spurn tradition might have robbed your Sage covenant of power.

While the tarot typology of covenants is default setup, there are many other ways to conceive of your bonds with others. The book has guidance on building new arcana, or even constructing whole new systems to use at your table – maybe you want to give characters power based on star signs and planets, comic book heroes, favorite animals, whatever you desire. There's even a worked example of an alchemy-inspired system where different locations are the mystic tools you use to transmute your contacts up and down the ladder of reagents towards your magnum opus.

Whether you're using the core covenant system or making your own, the key truth remains – your rebels will need the support of their community to win, and by the time you've played a full Voidheart Symphony campaign you'll have built a vast, thriving, interconnected web of people you can rely on. And that's my cue to thank you all for your support on this campaign, thank you for reading this far, and celebrate the final day of this campaign!