October Update
9 months ago – Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 05:50:37 AM

Hey!

After the burst of progress last month, October feels slower in comparison; I took some time to visit family this month, and a nasty cold got its claws in me, but despite those slow-downs I’m really happy with what I accomplished in the time I managed to dedicate to TEA this month.

Besides doing some small edits over the stuff I wrote previously, and moving some things around in the layout files for Issue 02, the main thing I worked on was rewriting the second adventure.

The Tower of Tursar Settru

The second adventure of the zine is a heist. The players are tasked with getting their hands on a voidglass blade for House Ker Onar. This blade can be found in the private collection of Tursar Settru, a warlock and the twin-brother of House Settru patriarch Rodall Settru. To get the blade, players must find a way into the warlock’s tower and into the vault where he keeps his collection of elder artifacts and expensive curios.

The initial draft of this adventure was more focused on the tower itself and treated it like a dungeoncrawl, something I quickly realized wasn’t the right way to go about it. That’s why I took this last month to basically rewrite the adventure from the ground up and lean more into the heist-ness of it. Adding more emphasis on the planning phase beforehand and providing the Seer with more details about different approaches players could potentially choose. This was a completely alien experience to me since I’m used to writing more location-based dungeon crawl adventures (like the first adventure in the zine “The Grafter’s Tomb”), so it was interesting to try and experiment a bit. I feel really proud of what I ended up with and how it fleshes out the inhabitants of Titan Port, but I’m also nervous for you all to get your hands on it, since it is so different from what I usually write :)

Here is a little peek at the revised sketch for the tower (an earlier sketch of it was showed in the May Update):

And a very rough sketch of the puzzle floor used to open Tursar’s vault:

Project Status

What’s Next?

I plan on finishing up the last bit of writing in the next month and knock out some of the remaining illustrations. I’m really excited that the project is slowly moving into its finishing touches stage, where I can hopefully share another beta PDF with you all near the end of December.

Thank you so much for your support!

Talk soon!

- Emiel

Project Spotlight: Sanctimonious Slimes vs Expired Epicures

My friends Ava and Nick are soon Kickstarting the first official adventure for the Errant RPG! It's called Sanctimonious Slimes vs Expired Epicures and after reading it I can tell you that it is definitely worth checking out! Nick has created a great dungeon filled to the brim with crazy memorable NPCs and shenanigans. You can follow it to be notified on launch here!

September Update
10 months ago – Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 06:28:01 AM

Hey!

September was a busy month, so let’s jump into an overview of the important bits.

Co-Author

I’m incredibly happy to announce that my editor and friend Ava Islam is now a co-author on this zine and other The Electrum Archive zines going forward. This means that besides editing my writings, she is doing additional writing and design work for it, allowing me to focus more on art and the bigger lines of the setting and game system. I was stretched thin over all the tasks of completing this zine, but due to this change, I am able to focus on the quality of the zine a lot more. Ava’s own work on Errant and her editing on TEA 01 and DURF is stellar, and I cannot think of anyone I would trust more as a co-author for the world of Orn :)

Adventure

While I worked on making illustrations for the zine this month, Ava did a big rewrite of some sections of the zine’s first adventure, The Grafter’s Tomb. Her writing has made the tomb's inhabitants a lot more engaging by filling in more about their background and motives. The adventure is nearing completion, and I’m incredibly excited for you to get your hands on it when it is done.

Art

With Ava as co-author I have the freedom to pour more energy and time into the illustrations for this zine. So I’ve spent this month commissioning more art, but also drawing a few pieces of my own.

Here are some of the new pieces done for the zine this month:

Timeline and Progress

Even though a lot of progress was made this month, the project isn’t moving as fast as I had hoped. The adventures prove to be the hardest part of the zine. We want them to be good and that takes a frustrating amount of time. It's easy to just draw a dungeon map of ten or so rooms and write "2d4 skeletons" next to it, but that isn’t something you couldn't have done yourself in your game prep. It is frustrating (I’d love to just have this zine finished already), but sometimes you have to sit with an idea for a while to really make it shine.

Here is a chart of where the project is at right now.

As you can see the estimated delivery has shifted into the new year. I worked hard to prevent this and there is still a chance we blow through the last hurdles before the end of the year, but for now I think it is better to calculate for a little extra time to make TEA #02 the best it can be.

Thank you so much for your support and bearing with us while we create this zine.

Talk soon!

- Emiel

August Update
11 months ago – Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 12:37:07 AM

Hey!

I've spent the whole month writing the remaining bits for the zine and handed them over to Ava for editing and rewrites! So over the next two months she will be editing them and filling some gaps I left, while I'll focus on making art for it (besides doing some rewrites myself), something I'm very excited for :)

While we're on the topic of art, here is a new piece for the included Grafter's Tomb adventure:

I've also received some of the first audio sketches for the soundtrack stretch goal! They already sound very cool, and I hope to share a bit of them in a future update, once they have had another layer of polish :)

That's it for this month's update! 

Again, thank you so much for following along and supporting this project! 

Talk soon!

- Emiel

July Update
12 months ago – Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 06:21:19 AM

Hey!

It's time for another monthly update!

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who reached out on Discord or through Kickstarter and gave their feedback on the playtest rules I shared last month. It is much appreciated and helps me ton while refine the zine!

Adventures

The adventures are coming along nicely. The first adventure, titled "The Grafter's Tomb", has been play tested with three different groups and is rapidly approaching a state I'm happy with. The other two adventures have been mapped out, but still need some more work before they are ready.

While working on these adventures, it became clear that the 68 pages stated on the Kickstarter page would not be enough to contain them if I were to work them out to the standard I hold myself to. What I imagined being two small dungeons of 2-4 pages quickly turned into two meaty adventures of more than double that page count. So this has become a bit of a problem. I already stretched the page count limit for a staple-bound zine with the 72-page first issue, so just adding more pages isn't really an option, and cutting content from the adventures to save space would make them not as good as they can be. After having talked this through with Ava and other designer friends, here is the solution I'm going with:

Issue 02's page count will go up to 72 pages. In addition to this, the third adventure will not be part of this second issue, but and will be made available to you as a digital PDF some time after Issue 02 has been delivered. This will give the other two adventures some room to breathe, and will allow me to make them two really great adventures without compromising that for the sake of print space. This will also allow me to go all out with the third adventure and make it the big dungeon-crawl through a monster-infested derelict spaceship that The Electrum Archive deserves!

So even though part of it will not appear in the printed zine, this change will essentially get you a lot more quality content than originally planned!

Art

I have started to commission illustrations for The Grafter's Tomb! Here is a sneak peek at an illustration of the water spirit guarding the tomb:

Timeline

Since we're about halfway through the project's proposed timeline, it is a good moment to see if the project is still on track. 

As of right now, we're still good for an early December delivery, with orders in BackerKit being locked near the end of October. If there are unexpected delays during printing, I might hold off on sending out the physical rewards until January to reduce the chance of them getting lost in the Christmas mail madness. I'll make sure to keep you all updated if anything changes!

Again, thank you so much for your support and helping me create this game!

Stay safe and talk soon!

- Emiel

CRIT Award nomination
about 1 year ago – Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 03:04:16 AM

I have exciting news! The Electrum Archive has been nominated for a CRIT Award for "Best Multiplayer TTRPG of the year"! 

If you like the game and would like to see it win this award, you can vote for it here: https://critawards.mystrikingly.com/#vote