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]
