March Update: 34 preview pages of collectible monster TTRPG and more

My parental leave has ended, and I am back to my real-world job. The domestic economy teeters on the brink of collapse, and my various bosses want to wring as much value out of me, a wet dishrag of labor, as they can before the bottom falls out. It is thus with a heavy soul that I report I haven't written...anything?! this entire past month.

However, the wheels set in motion in the before-times continue to chug-chug-chug-along. I'll update you on all that below:

• My talented layout artist has broken ground on the first 2 of a planned 4 Pokémon books I hope to release in February 2025 in commemoration of the franchise's 30th anniversary. This project is going to be as under-wraps as I can make it because I want it to be a shock-and-awe campaign (crowdfunding on my own website instead of Kickstarter, to not attract the ire of corporations with a larger legal budget than the domestic gross product of some small countries) when it gets off the ground. But for you, here is a pretty big teaser: 34 pages (in spread format) of the game, mostly the Pokémon you play as, although the real juice, imo, is how I am altering Into the Odd rules to capture the gamefeel of Pokémon combat. I'm also sharing some art from the talented Hodag, which will be in one of the other planned books.

• A collection I am publishing with Games Omnivorous (surely you've heard of them, but if not they are a preeminent and award-winning publisher of incredibly high quality game accessories) should be at the printers and ready to be announced at any moment! (Was actually supposed to have been this month, but printer snafus happened.) I will be sure to let you know as soon as that is something you can get your grubby hands on.

• The secret project is still mostly nascent but coming along, albeit slowly. But who wants to rush greatness?

• On Prismatic Wasteland, I recently commissioned some art from Skullboy, which is in the early stages. A little line work is uploaded in this post for you.

• On Foothills, I also commissioned cover art from Caleb Nelson, which I think is also looking really stellar. I have a rough (but really good) draft for you to look at presumably at the top/cover image of this post.

I am lucky that over the last 5 or so months I banked a ton of blog posts, so I'm not having to go fallow on that front by any means. Since my last missive to you all, I put out Control Weather Should Not Be a Spell, You Don't Need a Game System Before You Play: The Calvinball Experiment (turned out to be a very popular post), and Steal This Idea: Cardinal Sins. Only the last one wasn't previewed in advance with you folks, and mostly because it was such a small idea that I was initially going to put it just on Substack but realized I needn't be so precious with my blogging output. And also because I wanted to get it out before either Conclave (2024) won an Oscar (it only got best adapted screenplay) or the Pope died (hospitalized, but not dead as of this writing).

On the Substack front, it barrels ever forward. I do sort of regret calling it "weekly" but then again, at least it forces me to do it, even if some are better than others. From my perch, I yarped about the Element-themed blog bandwagon, asked myself 20 questions and proceeded to also answer said questions, announced the topic for the next blog bandwagon, and reposted a blogpost on language from deep in the Prismatic Wasteland vaults.

Listing it all out, maybe that's not such a bad output for a dad to a not-so-newborn-anymore baby who just returned to his helljob. Maybe I should give myself some grace. No! I must work harder! I must create more value for the shareholders! Or not, we'll see, I'm taking it a day at a time.