Hi Reader,

Welcome! Please, come in, sit down. I'll take your coat. No flowers on the table yet, although the weather keeps trying to sucker them into popping up.

What a year already. I don't know about you, but I'm white-knuckling it for the next 10 months before the midterm elections. Then—if I haven't already been shipped off to fight in the Davis Strait—I plan to vote for every aspiring Senator, Congressperson, school board member or dogcatcher who'll stand up to the White House. All I want is checks, balances, evidence-based science, trans rights, and the right to not be shot in the street by ICE. You know, kitchen-table issues.

But you're here for the games. So let's talk about them.

Defy the Gods

Yesterday, Cris delivered the PDFs of the book and play sheets. I plan to distribute them to backers in the next few days via DriveThruRPG.com. If you backed the game at the PDF level or above, and you completed your survey, get ready!

The printer is working away on the physical books. Monday, I got the F&Gs—"Folded and Gathered" pages, collated into 16-page signatures but not stitched together—and they look fantastic. We're still on track to get the hardbacks this spring.

I'm also playtesting the stretch goals—playbooks and adventure seeds!—and working on the top-tier backers' custom drawings and games.

Raccoon Sky Pirates: Total Chaos Edition

I've ironed out the odds of success in what I'm tentatively calling Raccoon Sky Pirates: Total Chaos Edition. Your odds are still wildly swingy, but you can stave off the worst of them if you're willing to limp home without any trash.

Now I'm working on the components. I've had fun making a not-quite-Monopoly board for the raccoons to paint over, and now I'm making not-really-Catan tiles. These will go with not-exactly-Bicycle playing cards to show your disasters, poker chips to represent the trash you've stolen, six bottle caps, a dumpster-fire meeple, and of course some 12-sided raccoon dice. All this is to make the game super-replayable just using the box's contents, without needing any print-outs.

After receiving quotes from several great manufacturers, we picked Boda Games to make it. Cole, the project manager, is keeping all the work on track, and we're talking about how to publicize the new game.

This is a hard one to play online, so I need help with that. I've reached out to Roll20 about how setting it up on their site.

The hardest part is the raccoons I've hired for the art. They show initiative, but they don't understand Gantt charts or deliverables. I've given them a bunch of sheets of paper, a typewriter, Windsor & Newton Series 7 brushes and bottles of ink ... we'll see what happens.

Fake Passports/Spy City

Over winter break, I started thinking about a new spy game, because of course I did. You play it with hands of custom cards, and you bet on them with poker chips (clearly inspired by the raccoons' trash, although the similarity ends there). The cards are pieces of identities, true or invented, and the chips are intel—whether supplied by your agency or cherished pieces of your own true life.

You play several short, successive games, like in Firebrands, but using poker as a metaphor. In each game, you never know if your fellow players—spies for other outfits—will help your hand or interfere with it. You might fall in love with another agent, betray them, or both.

In line with Jay Dragon's Expressionist Games Manifesto, the things your agents say and feel aren't part of the rules, and the rules put pressure on your relationships with the other spies.

I haven't playtested it yet, so just by talking about it, I'm already way too far ahead on my skis. I'll try to make time for it while focusing on the games that come before it in line. So many games to play!

Etc.

I have other ideas brewing, too:

• The real-time, slapping card game of fantasy sword fighting...
• My Die Hard tribute called Dice Hard (or May the Best Man Win)...
• A game about grief called Let Me Go...

...and many more. I need somewhere to share them, and Patreon may be the place for that. After Defy the Gods comes out, I'll look into it.

Last, GAMA Expo is coming up the first week in March! A shiny new batch of Horizons Fellows will be there. I'll have more to say about the Expo as the date draws closer.

Best,
Chrys

P.S. What part of the new Raccoon Sky Pirates are you most excited about? I'd love to hear about it!