Hi, everyone. Jason here.

As always, I want to kick off by inviting you to join us on The Gauntlet Discord server.

Before I dive into project updates, I want to shine a spotlight on the amazing work being done by Amanda and team over at Sprigs & Kindling. Sprigs & Kindling is a free Carved from Brindlewood fanzine that comes out every few months. There are now three volumes available and each is 100% FREE. Go download them!

Also, Sprigs & Kindling is going to be holding an online writing retreat in August! Here are the details: 
This free online writing retreat will take place August 11 to August 17, and is currently in planning stages. It will take place on Discord, and is open to people interested in Carved from Brindlewood game writing and design. Current sessions/workshops planned include: 

 If you are interested in participating please fill out this form! If you have any questions, please contact Amanda/iamatrex on discord or email sprigsandkindling at gmail!

I'm sorry to be crude, but the situation with the trade war is total dog shit. To be clear, I'm not speaking on the politics of the matter; there's nothing to be done about the politics at this point—it's the reality we have to deal with. And that reality, as it currently stands, is a 55% tariff on goods from China. Before Trump was sworn in, the thinking was that we'd be dealing with a 20% tariff on Chinese goods. That itself was a bad scenario, but I was prepared to make a lot of personal sacrifices so it wouldn't affect our projects (who needs dental care anyway, amirite?). A 55% tariff is... truly awful.

The problem with the trade war isn't just the increased cost of goods, which would be bad enough on its own, but also the effect it has on available shipping containers. We are a small publisher, and we depend on being able to have our products tucked into the corner of a shipping container that is already coming over to the United States. High tariffs mean even higher shipping costs, because trade is reduced and there are fewer shipping containers.

And I know this from personal experience! We had to ship Trophy RPG when the pandemic had massively disrupted supply chains. Because of those disruptions, our shipping costs tripled from what we originally estimated. It nearly ended us, but thankfully Brindlewood Bay was a big hit and gave us some breathing room.

There's also just a lot of confusion and uncertainty about what's going to happen. Some people think books aren't affected by the tariffs, but that has not been my experience. We recently shipped the Brindlewood Bay Cookbook and had to pay a bunch of extra import duties, despite the fact it was labeled as a book and not a game. Based on what I know right now, I estimate that a 55% tariff means our total costs to print and get space on a shipping container will be doubled from what you would expect in a normal environment. 

All of this is even further complicated by the fact that our business was counting on being able to do certain things not related to The Between, such as doing a new print run of Trophy RPG with cash on-hand. That's completely out the window now, and so there's a whole big revenue stream I can't count on anymore. Anticipating that, I've had to cut back on a lot of things in the community, meaning I've had to take on a lot more work than I had at the beginning of the year. 

Like I said, dog shit. 

As I mentioned in the last update, the lack of clarity on tariffs makes it impossible to plan when we can open the preorder store and BackerKit surveys. We have several unannounced add-ons we created for this project, and we have no idea how much we should be charging for them. 

That said, we're moving forward. Allegedly, we'll be getting more precise guidance on tariffs in early July. I'm not holding out much hope that this situation is going to go back to anything like it was in 2024, but who knows? In any case, we're sending surveys and launching the preorder store in late July. Assuming the tariffs don't go any higher, we should at least be able to break even on the project, and so we have some risk tolerance there. 

To be candid, knowing that The Between is likely going to just break even is demoralizing, especially since it's because of arbitrary and mercurial trade policies being forced on us. I've had to really dig deep to find my motivation here. Happily, I've managed to find it in two places: 1) the community surrounding this game and 2) focusing on the things I can control. People love this game and have been playing it for 4 years now. The community surrounding it is amazing and inspiring—affirmed by the support you've given here on BackerKit—and no matter how bad things get, that is something that gives me life and motivation. I sometimes think about the fact that my game has been played by thousands of people and it's just mind-blowing. We're going to get this done for ya'll, trade war be damned.

As for the things I can control, well, that's making sure we get the PDFs back on track and released. My revised estimate for the PDFs is late August for the core book and maaaaaybe Shadow Society. Suns of Another World is a bit tougher to predict. Three of the settings are done, but we're still waiting on Blood & Coal. Assuming I can get Blood & Coal on track, a September release for Suns feels do-able. 

I do want to share some fun stuff with you, though. Below is a folder of all the ready-for-layout drafts of the core book handouts. This includes playbooks, Threats, Mastermind Conspiracy, Mastermind Confrontation, Hargrave House Rooms, Residents, and Reference Sheet. I know some folks would like to start playing with the new rules, and these docs—combined with the old edition of the game—will allow you to do that. There's also a big homebrew community for The Between, and I know those folks want to know what the new rules and format are like so they can make their homebrews match up. This will also help with that. 

A few things about these drafts:

Honestly, even if we don't get the PDFs completely finished until September, there's a chance we can still ship books by late December/early January—we have a good working relationship with the printer at this point, and a Chinese agent who helps speed up a process that used to take many months. More likely, though, I'd plan for late February/ early March 2026.

I'd like to end the update by sharing some more of the fabulous art we've commissioned for the game...

As ever, thanks so much for your support!

-Jason

Hey everyone, Jason here.

The last 24 hours have been a real rollercoaster of anxiety, and I fear the ride isn't over yet. The massive and wide-reaching tariffs announced by the U.S. administration this week are going to destroy thousands of small businesses, and I'm going to do my level best to make sure The Gauntlet isn't one of them.

The tariffs aren't going to stop us from fulfilling The Between, but I've decided to pause rolling out the pledge manager and preorders until I've had time to talk to our lawyer and our printing partners to figure out how the tariffs are going to affect things. We had planned a number of add-ons for the preorder page, but now we have to assess the feasibility of doing those, and at what cost we have to sell them. We don't anticipate shipping costs for BackerKit pledges being higher than what we originally estimated on the campaign page, but they're almost certainly going to be on the higher end of the estimated range now.

We have some flexibility built into our business model (we learned a lot trying to fulfill Trophy RPG during Covid), but anyone who tells you they can easily adapt to manufacturing costs increasing 54% overnight is lying to you. We have to be very careful right now—any mistake we make in the printing and fulfillment could be an existential one. And so that's why I've hit pause until we can figure out what exactly is going on, and how we're going to be affected.

I will add that I'm not interested in discussing the politics surrounding this, or whether these tariffs are going to stick. The president is known to be quite mercurial when it comes to this kind of thing, but we can't count on these tariffs going away, and so we have to plan accordingly.

Speaking not just of us, but of the entire industry, I ask that you give the game creators in your life some grace over the next weeks and months. Everyone is scared (pity the poor board game people—they're fucked if these tariffs last); no one wants to see the business they've spent years building evaporate overnight because of an unnecessary trade war. Also: please do not "helpfully" recommend that we simply print our stuff in the United States. It's not that easy. There are only a handful of book printers in the U.S., and they are incredibly expensive and difficult to employ if you're not a big publishing house. As for non-book components, the U.S. is simply not set up for that kind of machine tooling for game parts. It's unrealistic, period.

On the lighter side of things, and in an effort to not end this update on such a bummer note, The Bad Spot recently started a new actual play of The Between! It's pretty incredible, and is the first AP to use the rules of the new edition of the game. Check it out 

Thanks for your patience while we try to figure out this unprecedented situation. 

-Jason

Hi, everyone! Jason here. I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk about today—insights to every part of our design and development process—and so please read on!

Before I dive into things, I want to invite you to join us on Discord. There are lots of good reasons for doing that—it’s always fun to hang out with people online who are friendly and who share your interests—but one that doesn’t get talked about much is that everything we do in The Gauntlet is right out in the open on Discord. Game development, game running, design thoughts—I love doing it all with our community. It’s just how I  like to work, and I’d love to have you there, part of the conversation. So much cool stuff gets developed out of our Discord server—it’s the beating heart of what we do—and that leads to the next thing I want to mention…

Sprigs & Kindling, the Gauntlet fanzine created by folks in our community, has just released Volume 2! This issue is all about The Between, featuring 145 pages (!!!) of material for The Between, including new playbooks, new Threats, new Masterminds, original artwork, and MUCH more. It is 100% FREE, so go grab it on the Sprigs & Kindling website! 

As we inch closer to our PDF release, I want to dive into the changes I’ve been making for this new edition of the game. We’re not just putting out physical books of The Between as it already exists. If that was the case, we’d already be at print (and there wouldn’t have been a need to even do a new edition of the game). I want the BackerKit Edition of the game to reflect my original vision for The Between back in 2018. I had a lot of ideas back then that I couldn’t make happen, either because of a lack of space and resources, or because I simply didn’t have the game design know-how to make it happen. Fortunately, we’ve had 5+ years of playing this game, learning what makes it tick, and understanding what it’s doing at a really foundational level (this is truly where The Gauntlet community comes in—I mean it when I say we design out in the open, and part of that is watching people play the game over the years, hearing their feedback, and iterating). We do this for every game, playing it for multiple years in a digital-only format so that we can learn the most we can about it for the ultimate, physical book release. It’s a slow process, but an important one (and one not enough TTRPG developers do, frankly). 

With that well-earned foundational understanding of the game in-hand, I now know how to do everything I want to do. And we’re going to do it in this edition of the game.

First up is one of my major design goals for the new edition: Hargrave House Rooms. In the current edition of the game, Hargrave House—the actual, physical space the Hunters live and work in—exists very much in the background. You might touch on it now and then via the Dusk Phase prompts, but for the most part, it’s just set dressing—and barely that.

In this new edition, Hargrave House is much more in the foreground. I’d go so far as to say the house, and the many hunters who have lived there over the years, is its own character in the story. The way we accomplish this is something entirely new: The Hargrave House Night Phase.

Now, when doing the Night Phase, you have to choose: a London Night Phase or a Hargrave House Night Phase. A London Night Phase is more or less the same as it exists in the current edition. A Hargrave House Night Phase is a whole new beast.

When you choose to do the Hargrave House Night Phase, we actually set the Hunters aside for that phase—we don’t see them at all during the phase. Instead, the Keeper presents a Hargrave House Room. A Room is structured somewhat like an Unscene—it’s a series of prompts. It explores a different hunter from the house’s past, and in particular something that happened to them in that room. Below are the Room prompts for The Map Room.

As you can see, the first prompt is a Paint the Scene that helps us understand the room as our present-day Hunters do. The remaining prompts explore the incident with the former hunter. The entirety of the Night Phase is just going around the table in turn, narrating whichever prompt you’ve been assigned. Once you’re done, the Night Phase is over.

Now, I earlier mentioned that we don’t see the present-day Hunters in this phase, and that’s true. But that doesn’t mean the events of the phase have no bearing on the present-day story in London. Far from it! First, players get to add something to their Personal Quarters based on something that was narrated or revealed during the Room prompts. So, let’s say in the first prompt, someone said there’s a really intriguing map of ley lines in the Map Room. Later, a player can say, “I want that ley line map” and then add it to their PQ, which they can then later use for a die roll. Or maybe another player says they want to take the pipe Godfrey Rathermere was smoking when he encountered his double from another world. And another player wants to take the knife Rathermere used to defeat his double. And so forth. The idea here is that the events of the past echo into the present in the form of objects lying around the house the Hunters can use.

But wait, there’s more! Each Room also comes with an Unlock! This is a new move or resource all the Hunters have access to. Below is the new move that unlocks after you narrate the tale of Godfrey Rathermere:

This is a very powerful (and dangerous!) move the Hunter can now leverage in their battle against the horrors stalking the streets of London. 

As an aside, I'll mention we've commissioned artwork for some of these rooms to pepper throughout The Between and Shadow Society. Some sketches from Ania Apart: 

But as in all things, there is balance: just because the Hunters have taken the night off with an HH Night Phase doesn’t mean the Threats have. We are reworking all Threats so they each have a countdown. Essentially, a set of boxes that are marked off one by one each Night Phase, and when all the boxes are marked, something terrible happens. In some cases, as with the Figg family, the Threat just gets away and can’t be resolved. In other cases, as with Sally No-Face, the Threat becomes a Servant of the Mastermind. But in some cases, more bizarre and dangerous things happen.
 
For example, in the Limehouse Lurker, if 5 Night Phases pass and the Threat is not resolved, the Keeper gets a new reaction: The Feast of Blood. Vampires, perhaps drawn by the power or novelty of the Lurker, or perhaps awakened via the increased bloodshed, begin stalking the streets of London en masse. With the new reaction, the Keeper can twisty any problem into a vampire problem. The city becomes absolutely lousy with the bloodsuckers. 

In the Demon of Kilburn Abbey, the demon’s actions and movements are normally restricted to the abbey itself, but if 3 Night Phases pass, the demon is turned loose on the city, making it much more dangerous. 

And so the Hunters have to always be mindful of the clock: the Threats aren’t slowing down just because they are. 

The third biggest change I’m making to the game is how the Masterminds and overall campaign structure work. Importantly, I’m introducing a brand-new concept: the Mastermind Question. Mastermind Clues are no longer a timer for the campaign; now, they are actual Clues that are collected in order to answer the Question of how the Mastermind intends to destroy the Crown. 

To make things even more interesting, when you Answer a Question about a Threat, if you get a 12+ on your roll, the answer is also a Mastermind Clue. This has a profound and powerful impact on the story: the Threats are no longer just a series of disconnected problems throughout the city. There is a chance that the events of the Threat are directly connected to whatever the Mastermind is planning. 

The overall effect of this change is that the events taking place in London feel much more cohesive with each other, much more of an interconnected story. This was a major design goal I had for this edition of the game, and I’m very confident I’ve nailed it. The game just feels… better with this change. 

Once the MM Question is answered, the Keeper immediately introduces the Confrontation. The Confrontation is a special Threat where HH takes on the Mastermind directly. In the current version of the game, the Keeper had to make all of that up whole cloth, but in this new version, we give you some tools. You still have to come up with how to present the mystery using the answer to the MM Question, but the Locations, Side Characters, Clues, and other elements are prepared for you in the form of the Confrontation Sheet. 

I want to spend some time on the art and visual design of this book. When putting together these books, we’ve had two big problems to solve in terms of visuals: 1) How to make a disparate collection of art styles fit together in a single product and 2) how to create visual consistency between three different books.

As you can see from the illustrations below, the different settings each have a unique art style that doesn’t necessarily match the others. 

We’ve added some extra complication in that we want the playbook illustrations to have a very striking, modern look as compared to the rest of it (see examples below). 

How to make this all work? Well, it’s a challenge, but one that our team is up to! I’ve enlisted the help of a few people, including Mike Martens and Ben Mansky, to help develop the unique look of these books, and to tackle the aforementioned challenges.

Mike's approach to creating visual coherence is to create what is essentially a design bible for The Between. Fonts are a major part of that—each book will have the same typefaces and fonts, ones that have been chosen to retain an antique feel but with modern readability, and ones that are transferable throughout the game's 5 settings (London, Louix XIV France, old El Paso, the turn of the century, and Appalachia). Color is also a major focus. 

Mike has created a palette for each book (including cheeky color names, lol) that, along with the fonts, will be used to create visual cohesiveness throughout.

This is an example of how it will look in practice. Each entry will have a dark introductory page, followed by lighter pages that contain the various elements. This visual language will be repeated in all the books, but with colors selected for the respective book. 

 

Another way we're going to create visual harmony is through the use of collage. Ben Mansky is being brought on to design and lay out all the handouts for the game. Ben's style is one that uses collage and "found" art assets to create a striking and varied, but coherent, look. You can see what I mean via the below examples. 

Elements of collage will also be incorporated into the books, adding texture and a sense of place.

The design bible will also be used for accessories. Below are these design principles applied to the upcoming Unscene Cards (more on those in a bit). 

I hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into what we're doing behind the scenes. I've spent more time on the writing and game development than I originally thought I would have to, which is going to make getting the PDFs out in April tough. I still feel confident the core book will be out by then, with the other two to follow shortly thereafter, maybe early to mid-summer. In any case, we'll keep you updated as we know more. Delays are always a bummer, but I'm much more interested in putting out the absolute best game we can (and I still feel very confident the actual books will be out by December—I gave us a lot of wiggle room there). And I have to say: this version of The Between rocks.  I've been running it for The Bad Spot (those actual plays will be available soon), and I couldn't be more excited about how this game feels to play. You'll be glad we took the time.

Pledge manager and preorders will be open by the end of this month. I keep pushing it back as the scope of things change; in particular, there's an add-on I'm really excited about: the Unscene Cards! What we discovered in playtesting is that the Unscenes really benefit from a physical thing that can be passed around between players, and the Unscene Cards are our answer to that. This is a deck of cards that contain the Unscene on one side, and a portion of the London map showing where the Unscene takes place on the other. It's a really neat addition to the game, and if you're looking at something to spend your extra pledge money on, this is a good one! We'll have a couple of other small goodies to add on, but the Unscene Cards are the big one.

Phew! Thanks for taking that journey with me. Bran reminds me that if you added on Brindlewood Bay or Nephews in Peril, please fill out the form. 

Take care! And see you on Discord! 
-Jason 

Hi everyone! Here are some quick updates on The Between (and a few associated things). First of all, as ever, we want to invite you to join us on the Gauntlet Discord server. Jason regularly shares previews of the work going on behind the scenes, and it's just a terrific place to connect with other people playing these games. 

Work on The Between, Shadow Society, and Suns of Another World is proceeding nicely. Jason and the team have brought on a few extra writers to cut down on the amount of work needed to be done on the remaining drafts, as well as additional help for editorial. Getting the drafts ready is the most enjoyable part of the process, but also the most taxing. It's just a lot of heads down work in the writing and editing mines, and play-testing new parts of the game as much as we're able to. As of right now, we're still on track to hit our delivery goals; we'll let you know if anything changes on that front. 

We're still missing some folks' shipping info for Brindlewood Bay and Nephews in Peril add-ons. These are being handled outside of the pledge manager and ready to ship, so please fill out the Google form ASAP. 

The pledge manager (and preorder page) is a bit delayed because we're waiting on some info from our suppliers. We're doing some add-ons (to be revealed later), but we need to get precise prices and shipping details, and January is Chinese new year, which kind of slows things down over there. It should up pretty soon, though. 

Our Carved from Brindlewood podcast The Darkened Threshold is already back in the new year with 3 new episodes, including one that has a glimpse at what's coming in 2025 (including some information about The Between). If you haven't yet had a chance to check the show out, we highly recommend it. Alex and Jason are great talkers, and the show is super helpful for anyone getting into these games. It can be found wherever you get podcasts, or on our website.

Speaking of our website, it has recently gotten a major refresh. Check it out! 

We're going to leave you with some brand-new artwork. Below are The Explorer and The Factotum, as well as the painting of the Hargrave House music room. All of this artwork is WIP—the finals will be in the books. 

Thanks for your support!
-The Between team

Hey everyone! We hope you're all having a lovely holiday season. Here are the project updates for December 2024.

As always, we want to start by inviting you to join us on The Gauntlet Discord server. Jason has been sharing regular previews for this new edition of The Between. Come join us to check that stuff out and discuss! 

If you added on Brindlewood Bay and/or Nephews in Peril, we need your address, so please fill out the below Google Form if you haven't already done so. We'll then cross-reference with our list of add-on customers from BackerKit. US customers will have their books sent out as soon as we have your address. International customers will have their books in late January (we need to get supply to the international fulfiller) but please go ahead and fill out the form. Please note: you will still have to fill out your pledge manager survey for The Between whenever we send those out (some time in January). Here is the Google form.

If you pledged at a level that gets you online game sessions from the game creators, be on the lookout for an email from us after the holidays.

Progress is moving along nicely on the books. We expect the draft of The Between to be complete and ready for layout by the end of the year. Shadow Society draft should be done by the end of January. We don't yet have an estimate on when the Suns draft will be ready for layout—it will depend on how development goes on Court of Wolves and Blood & Coal—but mid to late February is probably about right. 

An exciting announcement for the holidays: The Nutcracker Threat will be added to Shadow Society! The Nutcracker sees Hargrave House on the trail of a serial killer who is emasculating ballet dancers and posing their bodies in grotesque tableaux around the city. You can pick up the original version of The Nutcracker for free on DTRPG.

As ever, thanks for your support. Happy holidays!

-The Between team