The word "poll" seems to be etymologically newer than I thought (~1300 AD) and it basically means "head" or "one among you," like an interpretation of the noun "vote." I don't really know what I expected for such a banal word.

Uhhhhh hell yeah, democracy forever.

The promise we made with this Backerkit was that we would create content compatible with both the 2014 and 2024 versions of the D&D rules systems, and we intend on keeping that promise. This made sense to us since, at the time, it was largely just planned to be an edited update and rerelease of the first three books, which were already printed in the 2014 ruleset. But, after polishing these books for a year, and as the community (and us, admittedly) have gradually warmed up more and more to the 2024 ruleset, we're left with a very tough question: Which version do we send to print?

It had been our original plan to send the 2014 version to print (so that they match the first editions of our Murka books more closely) and to create a digital 2024 conversion PDF that would be included for anyone who ever bought our books (including all backers). But as we've continued working, and as we're nearing the point of no return that is pressing "submit" on our giganto-fuck print order, this decision has felt less cut-and-dry than it was the first time around. And we need your help deciding. (Spoiler alert, there is a poll)  

I'll explain our big thoughts deeply below, but first, a TLDR:

And ultimately, there are only two paths to choose from:

This is the most exciting hangup for us; we've had so much fun returning to the world of Murka, and we've got ideas, plans, and in many cases even drafts, for new Murka content. We want to keep releasing it out there for people to play. We want to give you more Murka: a music expansion, a video games expansion, an anime expansion—hell, I've even started work on a small for-fun Murka campaign product with a few subclasses and monsters that could be turned around in as little as a year.

We know for a fact that we want to make more Murka. But to keep the product line alive, we want to adapt and innovate. Eberron has already released, updating the artificer to the 2024 ruleset, and we anticipate them to gradually release more and more products into their 2024 ecosystem like Dragon Delves and eventually with some 2024 versions of the Tasha's and Xanathar's style books. The more content Wizards of the Coast (and other third-party developers we love, like Hit Point Press) releases in the 2024 ruleset, the less relevant and compatible our 2014 Murka content becomes.

We would love to be able to take books to conventions and sell them to new fans of D&D as well, folks who are only just discovering the game, and let them journey into Murka. But it's tough to explain to folks who are new that there are some nuanced reasons why our books are based on the decade-old version of the rules, rather than the most recent—and to understand that nuance, you kind of need to have a deeper understanding of the hobby.

We had always planned for the Ratified & Radified version of Murka to be our "definitive edition" of what Murka could be. After this, we didn't want to dip back in and edit these books anymore; we wanted to only focus on releasing new Murka stuff. But if we send 2014 rules to print, we're leaving ourselves open to have to do a second print run at a later point—especially if the D&D 2024 ruleset become the dominantly desired game format.

One of our first concerns was, "we should do what gets books in the hands of people the fastest." Obviously we are only able to make these books because of our backers (psst... that's you), and because of that, we want you all to be our priority. That's also why we ultimately decided a poll made sense.

When we crunched the numbers, we realized that because layout is going to be the most arduous bottle-neck process, it doesn't matter which version of the rules we take to layout first. Both rulesets ultimately will need to be laid out, and whether we start with 2014 or 2024, you guys will get the PDFs and books at the same time as we had planned.

It's no secret that the OGL catastrophe was... well, a catastrophe. But once the dust had settled and the new OGL/SRD protections were forged in the fires of Creative Commons, there came a lot of security with that. It even opened us up to being more able to talk about compatibility more directly without having to always be so oblique ("for the fifth edition of the world's most popular tabletop roleplaying game" if I have to write that one more time I'll explode). 

All that to say, we think it makes the most sense to send 2024 rules to print, but we aren't planning on making that decision without consulting you first. If people overwhelmingly want 2014 print books, then so be it! We're here to make the kind of Murka you all want to play. And no matter what, we'll do everything we can to make sure you're happy. so if you wind up not happy with the decision we make, we'll be able to refund anyone who is unhappy (and still provide those folks with PDFs either way).

So please, if you don't read another word in this update, please please scroll down to the poll at the bottom of the page and leave us your thoughts. Leave comments - do you have strong feelings one way or another? Are there things we aren't considering? Are there things you want us to think about? Let us know! Our destiny is in your gauntlets.

Good news! Playtests are going exceedingly well. You all caught a lot of really great balance notes and we'll be making our edits accordingly. For those that saw our last update, you'll know I was out of commission for a while (and unfortunately I will continue to be out of commission for a few more weeks), but the Murkan buck doesn't stop with little ol' me; Cheyenne is hard at work on the next Playtest PDF, which will feature both Magic Items and Spells (including a lot of brand new, never-before-seen content).

You can look forward to the next playtest PDF sometime soon! Until then, you can find the subclass Playtest PDF here.

Thanks for voting in the below poll (remember, this only applies to the printed books; we will be releasing PDFs of both rulesets no matter what). And thanks for supporting us. Can't wait for you to play our games.



Yours across the plains of Midwesteros,

Jaron R. M. Johnson

And the Action Fiction Faction