It's been a while! I've been meeting generals, foreign ambassadors, and helping the flood recovery effort in Texas. It's been a lot, and even after it ended we hit the ground running back at base. All of this to say, I've been very busy.
Nonetheless, progress has continued on Crowns 2e! Most of the art is done at this point, here's some of the newer pieces you have yet to see:
Once the last 13 images are in the book we'll move onto test printing. Once those are done, we'll do the mass printing and boom, the book is done! I'm excited to hold it in my grubby, little hands.
Updates on the Cards and Mud, Blood, and Stone
The card art is complete, but I wanted to have a solid, hand-drawn background instead of the box-y one I was using. That'll be drafted after the book art is complete, then we'll move into test prints.
Mud, Blood, and Stone is still being worked on. Right now the content is all written, I'm just trying to find some creative ways to layout the different dungeons. I decided to make the lizardkin into frogkin, because Bullywugs are underutilized and I like them darn it! I distinctly remember the episode of the D&D TV series that sold me on them:
Image courtesy of the D&D TV show fandom page.
Post-Release Support
I'm going to be running an adventure jam on itch.io after the full rules are released in PDF form (should be the next month or so). There will be a solid cash prize (at least $100) for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I think it'd be fun to run one every quarter.
On top of that there's a growing list of supplements I'd be interested in writing for Crowns 2e. I listed them in a previous update, but I'll go over them again here because it's been a while:
Most of them would be one-page (front-and-back) similar to my supplements for Aketon. Right now the plan is for each to be packed with content and a little bit of flavor text from a different in-universe source. Here's some examples:
A Sergeant's Guide to Gunnery (flint-lock weapons, grenades, and titles)
A Hunstman's Guide to Rendering (a laundry list of new unique rendering options for already existing monsters)
An Apothecary's Guide to Herbcraft (a laundry list of new herbs, what environments they can be found in, all of which give players new options for dealing with monsters, like an herb that can be made into a jelly that, when applied to a sword, lets you deal cold damage with your attacks, giving you a boost for fighting certain monsters with that weakness, like oozes)
A Castellan's Guide to Siegecraft (more advanced warfare rules for those who want them)
A Physicker's Guide to Trauma (a ton more options for dealing critical wounds by damage type)
A Saint's Guide to Relics (more mundane holy relics and a few new artifact classes for holy relics)
There would also be longer form supplements for specific things. These would probably have art involved. Right now the only one's I'm thinking of are:
The Lesser Key of Sorcery (a book of new spells)
Some kind of monster book
Help Wanted!
Also, as a reminder, we reached the stretch goals for Virtual Tabletop Integration and Web Tools. The VTT integration I'll work on myself, but I'm looking to just hire someone to:
Make a phone app for apple and android for Crowns 2e Character Sheets with Title Cards Integration, preferably this will also be a place we can link a bunch of community made content as well so people can see what adventures and supplements have been released for Crowns 2e
Make a website that functionally does the same thing but also makes the sheets easy to print as well
Contact me at [email protected] if that sounds like it could be you!
Overall Timeline Progression
Here's how we're doing compared to the original release timeline (the one's in italics have been added since then):
May 2025: Crowd funding campaign begins and ends June 2025: Backerkit Pledge Manager Surveys are sent out, early PDFs are sent out to backers Q3 2025: Final PDFs released and print copies are proofed/final edits are made <THIS IS US Q3 2025:Our first Crowns 2e Adventure Jam will begin and end Q4 2025: Physical copies of Crowns 2e + Mud, Blood, and Stone + Cards are sent out to backers Q4 2025: Web App and VTT Integration complete
Thank you guys so much for backing! To be continued...
You can playtest the game on our Discord with me and our awesome community! We don't bite! Reese Surles, Ward Against Evil
