We’re releasing the Wages of Sin Backer Draft v0.1 today! You should be receiving an e-mail shortly, otherwise just login to your backerkit account and you'll find it. This version contains all content everything except the ODC Prison Complex section at the end of the book. A few diagrams and maps are still in progress, but the rest of the book is ready for your eyes. I'm gonna pass things over to our Creative Director, Adam, who can explain more about the draft:
Hi backers! I’m Adam, Creative Director at TKG and first off I’ve got to thank y’all. The success of Wages & Mothership Month is what helped Sean and Alan feel confident enough to bring me on full-time, so cheers to all of you. I’m super excited for you to get your hands on this (and to see what we have coming…)
Wages is a beast. When the manuscript was handed off to me at the beginning of the year, I knew I had something incredible in my hands. We thought it might be a 200-page book at first. Nope! At 320+ pages (and counting), Wages of Sin has nearly as many pages as the entire Mothership catalog combined, and definitely has more NPCs and location maps.
As mentioned in a previous update, you'll see some elements in this draft that are marked "scan incomplete", etc. Sean and I will be tag-teaming the remaining visuals throughout the rest of the month, but we wanted to get the majority of the content in your hands in the meantime. Just in time for your traditional 4th of July Mothership-by-fireworks sessions.
Additionally, and critically, the book has not gone through PDF remediation yet. So the final version will have hyperlinks and be optimized for PDF readers, etc.
Where do I find the download?
You'll receive an e-mail link, but if you don't, then you should check your Backerkit Survey. To find that you can search your e-mail, or click on your profile picture on the Backerkit website > Your pledges & Surveys > Your Surveys > Mothership: Wages of Sin > Go to page: Digital Downloads > Wages of Sin Backer Draft > Download. If you have trouble, be sure to e-mail Tyler for support.
Inside front cover, featuring all the bounties in the book.
Feedback
Okay so! We’re sharing this draft now so you can start reading and send us any feedback, notes, or proofreading catches you may have.
We’ve set up a Google Form to collect all your notes in one place. That’s the best place to leave your thoughts—not in the comments, Discord, or via email—since we’ll be reviewing all responses together and organizing them for final edits.
We're getting close to the end now, so we’ll update the Backer Draft file with the ODC content once it’s finalized, and send another update when that’s ready.
Thanks again for your support, and as always, reach out to Tyler at [email protected] if you need anything.
Hope you're all doing great. We’ve got a few important updates to share with you on Wages of Sin, so let’s get right into it.
📦 TARIFFS + SUPPLY CHAIN
We’ve been deep in the weeds the last few weeks untangling the new U.S. import tariffs and how they’re going to affect our timeline and budget. Things are a little chaotic industry-wide, but we’re in a good spot.
Right now, our plan is to eat the 10% blanket tariff for our U.S. shipments. That’s higher than ideal, but still manageable. If things change (and they might), we'll let you know as soon as we figure out our next move. A lot can change in a week as we've seen.
⏳ FULFILLMENT TIMING
That said, the tariffs did cause some minor turbulence in our production and shipping timeline. Nothing major—but enough that we’re going to push fulfillment from Q2 to Q3. We know delays are never what anyone wants to hear, and we really appreciate your patience. To be clear: this isn’t a problem with the book itself. It’s basically a mix of logistics and scheduling.
🗺️ NEW LOCATION PAGES!
Adam is this close to finishing up the layout, and we couldn’t be happier with how it’s coming together.
The new location pages have been a huge hit here.
These really bring the bounties to life. Just flipping through the PDF you get a sense of what the missions or jobs might be in a certain area and you can sort of quickly decide whether you'd want to run a session there or start a campaign there. The big utility is it doesn't feel like a d100 book of bounties it feels like a bunch of smaller campaigns and with these location/setting details it's a lot easier to figure out how you'd integrate it into your game.
A couple more of the bounty hunters. We're adding one more piece of content to these spreads which is a "Wounded/Tactics" table which will give you a quick table to show how the bounty hunter reacts when wounded, or what they're general approach is. We've had a lot of fun with this and plan to include it for our VIP horrors in future books (and maybe even in an updated hardcover Unconfirmed Contact Reports).
One thing about the ODC prison module, and this thing really is module sized, is that it's inspired by the classic Traveller adventure, Prison Planet. One thing they did really well was you got a roster of basically everyone in prison, what they knew, what rumors they had heard, and who they were affiliated with. This makes for such a great sandbox style campaign where you have everything you need to run these social encounters right at your fingertips.
🙏 THANK YOU
Thanks so much, as always, for your support. We’ll be back soon with more details (and hopefully a print timeline update). If you have any questions, please reach out to Tyler at [email protected]. As always, stay safe out there. And we'll update again soon!
Sorry for the delay in the updates! We've made a ton of progress on the book and things are looking beautiful, so I thought now would be a good time for a progress report.
Right now, Adam is working on finishing up the layout. Adam just started with us late last year as our Creative Director and he is doing just a phenomenal job on Wages. This book is massive. It's clocking in at just over 300 pages right now. And he's made it so easy to navigate, and so fun to read. Aside from just how much content there is, I feel like this book really will stay right next to the Warden's Operations Manual in most Warden's games. There really is just so much content there.
We've got d100 bounties as you all know. But we've broken them down into locations. A lot of areas have more than one bounty in them, which makes them perfect for a campaign setting. Here on the Bounties index, we've got them organized by location, average bounty level, and then we'll have a 2-3 word summary of each bounty as well so that you can quickly find something you're looking for on game night. The meat of the book is the bounties themselves. Each one is a complete mission with everything you need to run them. Several are 2 pages, and a few are 4-8. They've got maps, tips, stat-lines, and at least one has one of the brand new ships we unlocked (a pirate ship!).
WIP bounty spread
What's cool though is that every location is now getting a summary page. So you're not only getting 100 unique bounties, you're also getting almost fifty fleshed out locations to run your games from. Right now Luke is writing up all this new location data to fill these pages with useful info on the all the locales and factions and relevant NPCs you might find alongside the bounties.
This addition was a late in the game one that popped up during layout and we're so glad we've made it work. It really turns this book into something really special where you can build a campaign from just a handful of small bounties. I'm really excited about it.
After that we've also got 10 bounty hunters to hunt your players down (or be hired???). We've done these up like expanded Unconfirmed Contact Reports entries and we've really focused on using them as horrors rather than just run of the mill contractors. It's a bad time when they show up. Your players will be afraid of them. The ODC prison complex is a sixty (60!!) page prison adventure at the back of Wages. We go for a different layout style here and it's turning out just beautiful. What's cool about this adventure is that it's sort of like a sandbox location. You've got the daily routines of the prisoners, what the work and living conditions are like, we give you a new weekly turn procedure, and then set your players loose.
There's new items and equipment from the prison's internal economy. There's 100 prisoners that each have access to different rumors the players can use to try and escape. There's four prison factions and 100 staff as well.
Outside of the prisoner is a dangerous world as well with alien animals and terrors ready to maim the players should the escape from the prison. The whole thing is just so much fun and it's the perfect thing to throw at your players after they've been stealing and wrecking Company property for a few sessions.
So the book now has over 300 NPCs, 40 new locations, 10 new aliens, 3 new ships, a prison complex, and tons of procedures for running crime and punishment on the rim.
Inside front cover
Right now we still look like we're on track for Q2 but we'll let you know if anything changes when we get closer to printing.
Oh! We've also done a new round of edits on the supply pod cards and they're looking great as well. These cards contain all the info you need to run these NPCs with a full piece of art on the front and all the stats on the back. We've formatted the stats in two ways in case you want to run them as PCs, which means players can just draw a card from the deck and start running them. Also, we've added an Input Code for the Mothership Companion App, so if your players want they can import the character directly into their app and start using them in the Companion's VTT or just keep the character with them wherever they go. We're super happy with these and we think we're going to keep doing them every year.
That's all for now! We're finishing up layout and then we'll be sending the draft to all of you so we can get your final feedback before our proofreaders dig in. If you run into any issues please give Tyler a shout at [email protected]
Hope you all had an amazing holiday, the TKG team took a good break for the end of the year and we’re all getting back in from being out of office, so let’s dive in!
First off, thank you all so much for making Mothership Month and Wages of Sin such huge successes. It’s been humbling to see all our third party creators thrive and flourish, and really encouraging to see the response to Wages and Megadamage.
What’s the status?
There are a lot of moving pieces to this campaign. Let’s go through each of them:
Wages of Sin
Manuscript is complete.
Editing should be done by the end of January.
Final art should be turned in by the end of January.
Layout template is built, final layout to commence in early February.
Once layout is complete, the draft will be turned over to backers for preview and proofreading.
Final proofreading will commence after backers have turned in any errors they’ve caught.
Final files will then be sent to the manufacturer.
Megadamage
Final articles due by the end of January.
Editing happens article by article as they are turned in. Proofreading for this is handled in house.
Layout, graphic design, and illustration happen as the articles are turned in.
We will send out a preview to backers once the pre-press draft is assembled.
Pledge Manager The basic pledge manager is up and running. You can add Add-Ons to your order now. Shipping will be charged later, closer to when the books are finished printing, as will applicable VAT and Taxes. As this is a book, VAT shouldn’t affect too many of you. We’ll be adding more products to the pledge manager over the next week or two (like PDFs of our back catalog).
We will start working on downloads for those of you who have purchased add ons in the next week.
Character Cards The character cards have been designed and written and are waiting for final art, which should be here by the end of January. Take a look! The fronts have a full sized portrait and the backs have all the details you need to run the character. These can be used either as an NPC, or as a pre-generated PC. Finally, we have included an import code for each card, so any of these cards can be imported into the Mothership Companion App as a full fledged PC. We’re pretty excited about that.
Card back
Card front
Stretch Goals
The ODC prison complex has been written. It’s an amazing addition to the book. It includes the complete plans for the prison complex, tons of new NPCs, and it makes a great location to throw your players into (or start them out at) to see if they can escape.
Printable Warden Posters: We’ll work on these once the books are at the printer’s.
New Ships: These are being designed now and should be done within the next month.
Audio Briefings: The scripts for these have been written, and once they make it through editing they’l be assigned to our VO team. These should release around when we fulfill the physical copies.
Poster Map: These will be designed once the book finishes editing.
Patches: The patches have been designed and should be sent off to print in the next month.
Companion App
If you haven’t heard, the Mothership Companion App recently added an amazing new VTT upgrade: you can run online sessions of Mothership from the app itself, including tokens, dice, characters, map making, and more. Here are two video tutorials about some of the recent additions.
We’ll release an update once each month (we’ve been bad about this in the past, but our New Year’s Resolution is to correct that.). When shipping and fulfillment commence you’ll start getting bi-weekly updates, and then after fulfillment we’ll do bi-monthly updates.
Until then, stay warm those of you with inclement weather incoming in the US (or in the midst of it). We’ll be back in February with another update. As always, if you have any issues, please e-mail Tyler at [email protected]
Hope you're all enjoying your holiday season, we certainly are at Mothership HQ! We're entering the final few days here and we've got a few stretch goals still up our sleeve.
We've just unlocked the brand new ships, which we're really excited about. These will be high quality renders with full stats and deckplans like entries in the Shipbreaker's Toolkit. They'll include:
An Interdictor: An "affordable" (think in the Raider range) combat based ship perfect for bounty hunters.
A Prison Transport ship: Perfect for planning breakouts. We picture the players may end up on these a time or two and so it's the perfect thing to keep a deckplan handy for.
A Pirate Ship: a very specific one built for “Pirate Queen” Shoshana Berahthran (one of the bounties). It's built out of other ships and it's the perfect ship for pirates or stranded colonists who have had to make do with what they can scavenge.
We're super excited about these. We're always trying to add new ships to the game to expand your library.
Mothership Companion App adds Virtual Tabletop
If you haven't heard we have an amazing Mothership Companion App for iOS, MacOS, and Android. The free version allows you to make a character and use the dice roller, but we've just added a paid upgrade for a Virtual Tabletop. It's, frankly, amazing.
Using the Mac App with my iphone mirrored to show the mobile version.
You can (very quickly) build maps in it, add tokens for other characters, see public dice rolls, send equipment, etc. Also, you can send out a code so that other players can join the session (including players with the free version!). We have a LOT more in store for this app, so if you haven't already, this is the perfect chance to give it a try.
Audio Briefings
Our next achievement/Stretch Goal is for Audio Briefings. These are high quality audio recordings of the "briefings" for the d100 Bounties performed by professional voice actors. These are the perfect prop for your game to play before the mission begins.