Today has been whirlwind! I had trust that the DCC community would come out to support my project but to blast through all the way to 2k and beyond was out of my scope. I set $300 to be my goal because that is what I needed to physically make the product. Two thousand felt like a dream before but now...now I want to see how far we can go!

BUT I'm not gonna ask for that unless I'm giving you something cool to go with it. So I have spent the last few hours (not refreshing the page) coming up with stretch goals! I hope you like these!!

P.S. Please give more suggestions! I may add extra slots between these goals or make them beyond 4k. Who knows! I love your input!

Holy! That is alot of new stretch goals! But what do they all mean?
$1500 - Virtual Tabletop Tokens of NPCs & Monsters - Ready to play!
$1800 - Custom Character Sheets with Pre-Gens!
$2000 - Artwork of the Menagerie's giftshop! Players can buy all kinds of junk/memorabilia!
$2500 - One of the items in the giftshop will be "Gragon's Breath" Hotsauce! The label will be the sticker!
$3000 - A brand new encounter area added to the dungeon!
$3500 - Mr. Ringtail bookmarks!
$4000 -   A brand new encounter area! The hidden back entrance to the menagerie.

As this is my first backerkit I wanted to make sure I can keep everything in scope without blowing the budget, extending fulfillment timeline, or making shipping too hard on ya'll! You deserve the best! As such, the goals are a little bit further away than the early ones. But I made sure to make them EXTRA spicyyy~ Let me know what you think about these! 

Many of you came here because you know me in the community but I know a lot of you found me through other means and I thank you both for putting your trust in me. Let me tell you a bit more about who you are backing!

Way back in the year 2022 I had just rediscovered art. I spent most of my childhood drawing and I even went to an art middle school! (I had to apply and everything!) But I fell out of it. I ended up trying to fill that gap with other creative measures such as filmmaking or painting miniatures, and other non-creative endeavors such as teaching or astrophysics?!? (Idk how I thought that was gonna happen). Finding art again renewed my passion tenfold and one of the first things I drew was this crappy DCC concept cover. If you were on the facebook DCC RPG rocks back then you might recall it! I was really into DCC RPG and had been a judge since 2018. The likes of Doug Kovacs and Stefan Poag and so many others inspired me but then I just... stopped.

I have no idea why. I just did not attempt to make another old school style piece of art again. I tried following trends online to get popular. I made anime art because I thought that was what you had to do. Right? That is the only way to make it as an artist online! To be an...influencer. yuck. After a couple years I got burnt out. The only reason I kept up with my art were my close knit group of friends but I lost a good bit of the passion. Then I saw a video.

There is a youtuber called MapCrow and let me tell you, one of the best in the biz that one. He put out these videos on how to draw isometric maps and all of that love for drawing old school rushed back to me and I instantly took out my pencil and sketched up a map. That map would end up becoming the dungeon of Mr. Ringtail's Menagerie. But not yet because I said "Yeah this was fun!", put it away, and did not touch it for a year.

A year later MapCrow, like a guardian over my shoulder pops back into my feed. "OH YEAH! I SHOULD INK THAT MAP!" I exclaimed to myself very annoyingly. And I proceeded to do just that. I inked the entire map in one day and when I was done I said to myself "Yeah this was fun!" but this time instead of putting it away I thought... "What If I made a monster for this map and put it online?"

That was in 2025. And that begun one of the most rewarding and amazing paths in my life so far. I wrote up 10k words (something I never dreamed I could do, even though I also wanted to be a writer) and drew a pretty cool cover If I do say so myself. I embraced my love of DCC, Old School D&D, and Cartoonists to find an art style I actually love and am proud of.  I got back into DCC RPG full force, making a local road crew spot again and reengaging with a community I lost touch with. Then somehow I found a job listing for Goodman Games and they actually picked me for it! (HAHA suckers! NO TAKEBACKSIES) I moved out of my parents house and traveled across the country vertically from Florida to Indiana. I now have several books coming out with my art in it! Delicious in Whiterock by Witch Pleas Press, Seekers Ov the Other Worlds by Owl Knight Published, The Old Hunger by Girls@Computers, Battle of the Bands by Critical Hit Parader and MORE!

And to top it all off, I finally, finally, have brought you Mr. Ringtail's Menagerie. After delays of "just not feelin' it" to moving to the middle of a bunch of farmland It is finally complete (almost! Look at all those stretch goals!) and I feel like I have finally found my tribe. If you see me at a local game store or at a convention please come say hi! Please tell me about the awesome adventure you had in the menagerie and sit down to game with me.

Anyway, thank you for listing to me ramble on about how I got here! I hope you like the book and all the extra flourishes that are being added. And here is to the future with many more adventures to come!

Rock on reavers!
- Judge Tahlia

P.S: Eagle eye viewers might recognize the reference to my first DCC cover in the Road Crew poster! If you like it you can add it on as an art print!