We’re hurtling close to the next set of stretch goals, and we’re so incredibly pumped about the prospect of being able to create the Map of the Reach. In anticipation of hopefully hitting that goal, Zach and Josh have been collating a list of corporations, organisations, planets, sectors and systems that have been mentioned in previous adventures into a comprehensive world-building doc. 

The hope of Outlaws and Corporations is that you can use the new material to run galaxy spanning campaigns that jump between different published adventures, homebrew materials and third party adventures from across the Orbital Blues (and general sci-fi) scene, so the connective tissue provided by OXC and the new map are going to be a huge part of that toolkit.

We had a few questions about the new character sheet. If you want to grab a character sheet notepad, it's now available as an add-on for your pledge! The updated version will be made available digitally as soon as it is finished.

This weekend we’re showcasing a special two-part Actual Play of ATMOSPHERIC BREAKUP, the dramatic arc-ending adventure available as one of the bonus rewards for backing all six Orbital Blues Month projects. This is a perfect way to get a sneak peek into what's in the adventure and see how it could play out at your table.

ATMOSPHERIC BREAKUP is an adventure toolbox for providing a climactic ending to any ORBITAL BLUES arc, filled with climax and heartbreak. It centres on a showdown with a Nemesis pulled from the Crews’ Troubles, the perfect adversary for any sad space cowboy. The setting is Affinity Station, an isolated space station powered by a prototype power source, and things are sure to end in blood, tears, or both. 

ORBITAL BLUES co-creator Zach Cox is sitting in the Storyteller chair, joined by a series of stars from across our actual play scene: StellaLuna, Drakoniques, Brain Flaherty, and Michelle Kelly. This’ll be a game that’s sure to make us feel the blues more than ever before. These poor space cowboys don’t know what’s coming for them.

Tune in at 11am EST / 4pm BST on Saturday 25th for session 1, then the same time on Sunday for session 2. We’ll be streaming on twitch.tv/tonyplusone, and it’ll all be linked on the project page.

Josh, Sam and Zach all did an extended interview as part of the Rascal 7, where they talk about the beating heart of our game, the needle drop hits, and discuss the nature of running a community event like Orbital Blues Month. You can grab some real insight into the thoughts and intent of the three-headed sad-space-cowboy giant, and how different parts of the team approached creating Orbital Blues. 

Original Orbital Blues graphic designer and Jupiter in Eb Minor creator LoneArchivist appeared on Many Sided Media’s Talk of the Table Podcast for an interview with Brian and Elliot on RPG graphic design and layout. You can listen to Lone talking about his work on Orbital Blues, his other collaboration with Zach on the DIE RPG, the mothership community project Hull Breach and many, many more. 

Zach also made an appearance on the Weekly Scroll for the umpteenth time, weighing in with crispy takes on Backerkit vs Kickstarter, the design of a collaboration month, the creation of the Orbital Blues setting, and what is next for SoulMuppet. Find it wherever you get your podcasts! 

The final episode of the Why We Roll arc from Stillfleet Studios came out yesterday, featuring Wes Franks of Formula-Infiniti as their guest for the day. Be sure to check it out!

Elliot Davis and Josh Dormanski were the guests on Now You’ve Zine It show on PlusOneExp, with the two creators cross-interviewing each other and deep diving into The Wanderer (Elliot’s SoulMuppet Published solo game for ORBITAL BLUES) and Paramour (Josh’s contribution to OB month). Watch along for a thorough exploration of the two zines… Watch the vod on Twitch or YouTube.

Thanks again for all your support folks and hopefully the next time we speak we'll be celebrating hitting that next stretch goal!

~ Zach, Mol and the Orbital Blues month team

Hello Outlaws!

Last update we spoke a little about adding some stretch goals for this project, we've decided to add FOUR stretch goals, two we've already hit and two aspirational targets.

SoulMuppet marketing manager and multimedia artist Molomoot is going to be creating a new custom character sheet for Orbital Blues. We’re going to offer the digital version for free to ALL BACKERS of Outlaws and Corporations, and host it on our website too after an exclusivity period. There is also a physical tear-away A5 notepad version of the character sheet that you can grab as an add-on to your pledge.

One of the cross collaboration rewards for ORBITAL BLUES MONTH is Atmospheric Breakup, an adventure written by Orbital Blues co-creator Zach Cox. This is Zach’s attempt at an explosive, arc-climaxing, campaign ending adventure, where Troubles will brew, Swans will sing and Sad Cowboys will be Movin’ On. 
The Crew will face a Nemesis, a manifestation of one of their Troubles drawn into the real world, who pose a threat to not only the Crew but Affinity Station, an orbital platform with an experimental power source. 

This was going to be a pamphlet adventure, but thanks to this goal and your amazing support we’re going to bulk it out into a full zine since we hit the stretch goal.

We’re going to offer the digital version for free to ALL BACKERS of Outlaws and Corporations, and host it on our website too after an exclusivity period. Physicals will be reserved as an exclusive treat for the saddest space cowboys amongst who you backed every single project from the month. 

If you want to know more about Atmospheric Breakup, you can watch Zach GM it on a live play on PlusOneExp across two sessions at 11 AM EST on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th April. We’ve invited a cast of superstar players from across the OB actual play scene: StellaLuna, Drakoniques, Brain Flaherty, and Michelle Kelly, who we hope will make us all weep!

We’ve always been nervous about digging too much into the larger setting of the Frontier Galaxy, always preferring mystery to narrative authority, but it's time to finally let the vibes fall away and show you our vision of the galaxy. 

Joshua Clark, OB’s primary artist and co-creator, is going to create a Map of The Reach, a huge, sector spanning chunk of the Outlaw Galaxy, stretching between the corporate-dominated Core and the isolated and lightly populated outlaw-paradise of the Belts. The Reach is the former frontier, left behind as humanity spread to the far corners of the galaxy, becoming increasingly more populated and developed by the year. The map will link together the settings of your favourite Orbital Blues adventures and will detail famous systems, the major corporate homeworlds, and other important travel hubs and populated planets. It couldn’t possibly include everything in the Outlaw Galaxy, there’s thousands of systems in the Reach after each, all which will leave plentiful gaps for your Storytellers to fill, as well as giving future first and third party adventures room to breathe. 

One side of the poster will detail the full, skewmorphic map, and the other will be a valuable GM play aid written by Zach for galaxy-spanning OB mega campaigns, providing random encounters, an index of the planet, corporations and systems we know about (with published adventure references), plot hooks, random tables for planet, city and ship names we didn’t have room for on the map, and whatever else we can stuff onto it. 

We’re going to offer the digital version for free to ALL BACKERS of Outlaws and Corporations, and host it on our website too after an exclusivity period. If you want the full, double-sided physical A1 foldout monstrosity, we’ll provide it as an add-on and also include it in the top tier pledge: Starship Captain.  

A couple of months ago, our friend Galen Pejeau (Solarcrawl, Stoneburner, Inevitable) approached me about wanting to do a poster for Orbital Blues Month. We worked together on coming up with the Atlas Core and Expanded Richmond-Class, a legendary outlaw vessel prized for its adaptability and open-source engineering. Galen is hard at work on sketches for their weird, modular vessel, and is planning a schematic cutaway poster for this Crew Ship group's ship in the style of a 60/70s car user's manual. We wanted to run a whole project for it as part of Orbital Blues Month, but unfortunately Galen couldn’t find any time in their schedule, so we’re going to return it to life as an add-on and stretch goal for Outlaws and Corporations. 

We’re going to offer the digital version for free to ALL BACKERS of Outlaws and Corporations, and host it on our website too after an exclusivity period. An A2 version of the double-sided foldout poster will be provided as an add-on

Before we sign off for this update, we just want to say another massive thank you to everyone that has backed this project and the other fantastic projects in Orbital Blues Month. We seriously couldn't do this without you and we are blown away by the love and support all of the projects have recieved so far. Be sure to go checkout the other Orbital Blues Month projects as many have begun announcing exciting stretch goals of their own!

Thanks for all the support, 

~ Zach, Mol and the rest of the Orbital Blues team!

Hi all 

Thank you all so much for your support of Orbital Blues Month! Every single project has now funded only a week in.

I know lots of you have been asking, we’re keenly eyeing stretch goals. We funded much faster than we imagined, and have been caught a bit off guard by the success of both Outlaws and Coporations and OB Month at large. We want to make sure we’re delivering stretch goals that are exciting, while not delaying delivery, costing loads of money or asking for way more money from our backers. We’re aiming to put in some fun retroactive goals for already hitting 200% and 300% funded goals at £30 and £45k, and announce our plans before the end of the week.

Zach appeared on Wait, Roll That Again for the second time, chatting with Alex about growing Orbital Blues from an initial success into a cult classic, and running Orbital Blues Month.
 

Sam will be joining PlusOneExp to talk about some of the projects from Orbital Blues month tonight at 8pm BST. Check it out to find out about all the different projects in the collab month. Zach went on Procedures At Play last week to talk about Troubles and Money. 

Josh Dormanski returns to Ansible Uplink, Chris Airiau’s sci-fi rpg adventure review podcast. The pair behind PARAMOUR chat about two adventures from our Rogue Anthems box set: Hardsuit Holdup on the Hartwell Limited by Jess Levine and Voidlock Tombstone by Zach Cox. They also reviewed neo-noir OB adventure The Man We Knew by Kayla Dice on their last episode. She’s teamed up with STATIONS on Fistful of Stars

Zach went on the Yes, Indie’d Pod to talk about their design history and the progression of Orbital Blues from an idea to the game we have now.

There’s also a whole series from the team at Why We Roll. On your podcast platforms you can find their chats with Zach and Josh Dormanski from Paramour. You can find the rest on Youtube, with another episode with Adam from STATIONS and A Fistful of Stars, and the final one with Wes Franks, the masterminds behindF-Infiniti.

Finally, Zach is doing an actual play of Atmospheric Breakup with some incredible stars on PlusOneExp’s Twitch channel on the weekend of April 25th/26th. Keep an eye on us while we announce casts and timings, but it's going to be STACKED.   

Please continue to share the project widely, check out and share all of these appearances and episdes! 

Thanks,