Friends, thank you so much for your outpouring of support for this chill game of adventurers settling down to run a cozy tavern. We had an incredible stream of backers show up on the final day! Over 500 people kept the Backer Train running and we not only stayed open past the 6pm deadline but we tipped past the $200,000 mark which means all our authors and artists are getting an 80% pay bump!

The next couple weeks will largely be quiet in terms of updates. BackerKit needs to collect and distribute your funds to us, we are hard at work commissioning art and revising the layout, and then we'll fire off the order for the print books. We'll also be working with Campaign Coins and Wood Tactics to get the dice and coins produced.

We'll keep you apprised as we hit milestones, but for the near future we're going to keep our heads down to push this material into production. 

Along those lines, note that the stretch goals you all unlocked will be created on a separate timeline. Most of them will not be part of the book itself and will be delivered when they are completed. (We don't make a habit of commissioning stretch goals until we know the goal has actually funded.) 

On behalf of the whole team, once again: thank you again for being part of this project. You blew past our humble expectations and we're excited to bring Stewpot to market. It's going to be a bigger, prettier, and better game because of you.

As we move toward the final 48 hours of the campaign, it's time to turn things over to designer Takuma Okada for a reflection on how Stewpot started, over six years ago:

On April 23rd, 2018, I wrote the first sketch of Stewpot for Ingenuity Alive, a Friends at the Table inspired game jam. If anyone wants to play the most lightweight version of Stewpot possible, you definitely can with this first version.

3. Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern
You run a tavern that is a favorite of adventurers far and wide, famous for its spicy sausage stew. Running a tavern is hard work, especially when there are adventurers involved, but at the end of the day there’s nothing else you’d rather do. 

As you can see, the focus was initially just on running a tavern, and when I started fleshing it out I landed on two versions of the game: A one-shot version where you start with Adventurer Experiences and convert them to Town Experiences for a short game, and a longer game mode where you would pick any two jobs to start and one Experience in each. Stewpot used to include Coin, and you could use Coin to purchase new Experiences, Jobs, and Tavern Ratings. 

In late 2018, thanks to playtest feedback, I decided to center the transition from adventuring to town life and removed the Coin mechanic and long-form structure. I think that was the last really major change, and everything since then has mostly been about filling out the game with more mini-games and prompts and refining the mechanics. 

It was definitely a good call to focus on the shorter game idea, especially considering that was the first year I really started designing games. But I still have some fondness for the long-form game. Maybe I’ll have a game idea that will let me revisit it in the future! 

-Takuma Okada

Hello friends - all 3,000+ of you! We'll keep this update short.

First off: Our vendor for the custom dice has sent over a shot of the first run as he's been spinning up production. They look fantastic.

Remember, the Chef's Bundle and Golden Years Bundle each include one of these custom dice (one die, not all eight as pictured here). If you are pledged for a different tier that includes a physical book, you can add on the die and custom coin.

If you want one of these super cute d6's, now is a great time to update your pledge. (Unfortunately, due to logistics reasons, you can't add-on the die & coin to a pledge that only has digital items - for instance, if you pledge for just the PDF or the PDF & Roll20.)

It's the final week of the campaign.

Your support has exceeded our humble expectations and we're so excited to be bringing Stewpot to market. Our stretch goals at this point are about paying it forward to the creators who gave so much of their time and talent to make this the cute, chill game the precious gem that it is. We're currently on the brink of a 30% bonus, with that increasing by ten percent for each additional $10k we raise.

Share the project with your friends and through your various social media and we can boost that pay raise even further. Thank you again, and we'll be back with you next week as the campaign winds up!

Hello friends! We're just past the mid-point of the campaign and yesterday we passed the $130k mark. That means we're commissioning some actual recipes for Stewpot!

It also means we've entered a new phase of stretch goals: pay boosts for all our core book and stretch goal creators. We've already unlocked a 10 percent pay bump for the artists and authors contributing to the game, with that increasing to 20 and 30 percent as we push toward $150k.

In other news, we've recently seen some thoughtful reviews and podcast episodes about Stewpot!

"What if your D&D adventuring party settled down and opened a tavern, and the vibes went from, like, dragon murderers to more like, Bob’s Burgers?"

That's Sam Dunnewold of the Dice Exploder podcast who sat down with Lee Conrads to talk about how Everyone Adds a Detail in Stewpot.

Listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5GrTPnTsIRKUs3BMComrWU
Or read the transcript here: https://www.diceexploder.com/blog/2024/4/21/podcast-transcript

Seamus Conneely at CannibalHalflingGaming.com posted a very thorough and thoughtful review of the Preview Edition we share with every backer:

"a very strong batch of evocative scenarios and prompts, each one providing a great jumping off point to explore your tavern, your town and its people, and most importantly both who your characters are and who they become."

You can read the full review here: https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2024/04/30/stewpot-tales-from-a-fantasy-tavern-backerkit-review/

And finally Takuma Okada, designer of Stewpot, sat in on an episode of Dice Exploder to discuss the game Ribbon Drive and its Playlist mechanic:

"I really love mechanics that help you get in the mood, get in the right mindset, get the right vibe. I like Oracle type things. I like things that, you know, aren't quite prompts that give me a lot to work with... the Ribbon Drive music stuff especially reminds me of like really good, more dramatic long form improv stuff that gives you the kind of vibes that you can really lean into and develop."

Listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6bjPGFjxEMVrcUunNxDIv8
Or read the transcript here: https://www.diceexploder.com/blog/2024/4/18/podcast-transcript-playlists-ribbon-drive-with-takuma-okada

If you're just cracking open your Backer Preview PDF of the game, we thought these reviews and podcasts would help give some insight into the casual, cozy world of Stewpot.

And if you've played the game yourself, we'd love to hear how it went. Let us know in the comments!