2023 Q2 Update

Hey patrons, as we come towards the end of Q2 it's time for another check in! Grab your magical beverage of choice, get settled in your coziest seat, and let's dive into it! 

SIDEQUEST Year 2 Annual

First things first, the SIDEQUEST Year 2 Annual is now live on Kickstarter. We're already funded, and have unlocked the Special Edition cover! 

Head to KS to back it. 

This annual will be how the last year of content is available in print; we're still not at the stage where its cost effective to print individual issues, so gathering them in annuals makes the most sense right now. 

Product Shipping

For this campaign I'll be handling shipping in-house. Mixam are still doing the printing, same as last time, but the 3rd party they used to send the books out for the last KS wasn't up to the standards I expect. They didn't offer tracking information, so when things went missing I was completely blind. 

This option is a bit more expensive, and means a lot more labor on my end, but every backer will get a tracking code so they can follow their parcels, which is way more important. 

The thing I am most excited for though, is that this campaign is going to be a trial run; a field test for product fulfilment that could open the door for selling more printed products directly via our own web sales. 

I don't expect the fruit of this seed to bare until Q1 2024, but it's the first step to hopefully big exciting things.

Health Update

If you've been around for a while now you'll know I've been ill a lot in the last year. I picked up COVID for the first time in May '22, then was chronically fatigued all through that summer. I went to DRs and they couldn't find anything, but then over Christmas I picked up a nasty infection that laid me out, and when I got back from my holidays in May I picked up a different infection and spent 2 weeks totally down and out. 

It's been more than a year of health related problems now, so I am going to go back to the DRs next week to try and get them to investigate further. I'm so fortunate enough to be able to do this full-time, but it does mean that any time off I take has immediate and significant negative effects on the business.

A couple times in the last year I've spent pretty significant money building up the backlog of articles for SIDEQUEST to get ahead, then I get hit by illness and am forced to dip into or completely use it up. 

I don't have a quick fix for this in the short term, unfortunately. I'm starting to build up our backlog again, and the extra money from the year 2 KS should help to do that.

Upcoming Content

As mentioned in previous updates, from Issues 25, there will be Pathfinder 2e content in the 'zine alongside 5e material. 

Right now the plan is to present simultaneous content, so wherever possible a mechanic will have both 5e and PF2 versions displayed. 

How much we can do that depends on two main factors; suitability, and my health. 

Some content isn't suitable for both systems, usually because something similar or that performs a similar function already exists in PF2. 

Then there's what my current health allows me to get done. Presently a lot of the PF2 conversion work is being handled by myself alone. As the patreon grows I'd love to bring in someone dedicated to handle that, but it's not financially possible just yet. 

Some content is being written for both systems simultaneously by multi-disciplined writers, and I've made a bunch of resources available to my writers to help them build their PF2 system mastery, but it will take time to get everything running smoothly. 

Uniquely You

I saw this tweet from LegendKeeper earlier and it spoke to me much more deeply than I expected it to. 

I've been struggling for a while with workload and how to make SIDEQUEST sustainable in the short term while I'm struggling with my health, but I think this is it!

I have a wealth of lore, characters, locations, and other material from my homebrew world of Istar that I don't think we've utilized nearly enough in SIDEQUEST. 

Part of the reason is because I've held a lot of it back in the hopes of one day producing a full setting guide, but I realize now that doing so deprives you of that content, is not using the tools I already have to make my life easier, and I can collate relevant information into a collected setting guide book in the future if that becomes an option. 

So starting in issue 25 you're going to be seeing a lot more of the world of Istar, and as we move forward, you'll get more content that has been built for that world.

Weird Shit

Another thing I'm excited to lean a lot more into in future issues is a category of content I call Weird Shit. When I send out my newsletter to my writers asking them to pitch ideas for the magazine, I will sometimes ask them for the weirdest stuff they have in their brains, which sits completely outside the scope of content I've been specifically looking for that month. 

Creating to the confines of a box can be fun and rewarding, but some of the best ideas come when you break down those walls and go hog-wild. So I am going to be giving my writers (and myself) a lot more freedom to get weird and make things that are super interesting. 

You're Iconic, Baby!

The last well of untapped creative content I'm excited to dive into in future issues is our line of "iconic" characters! 

The iconics as a concept came about in early '22 as I was working on the Class Cheat Sheets. About halfway through the art call for that project I realized that there was the chance to start building up a library of artwork of the same characters who could become synonyms to Icarus and the products we make. 

Since then, as you can see in the roster card above, we've fleshed out this cast of characters a lot more, and several of them have now appeared inside and on multiple covers of SIDEQUEST, but I want to do more! 

I want to start fleshing out these characters through more artwork, articles, and mechanics. 

Most of them are locked in, we just need names for the Ranger and Druid, and I will probably switch out the monk completely as we've already got plenty of elven representation on the roster. 

I'd love to hear some suggestions for what ancestry you'd like to see for the Icarus Iconic Monk down below! 

Thank You

I want to close out today's update by just saying thank you for your support here on patreon. You are keeping the lights on and allowing me to do this as a full-time job and pay dozens of artists and writers, which is just amazing. 

I'm especially appreciative of you all for being so patient as my ongoing health stuff has delayed issues and caused other problems. 

I've love to hear what kinds of content you'd like to see in the 'zine in the next year down in the comments (and I'll probably do a separate post to that effect here, on youtube, and in discord too soon).

Much love
Anto