Good Backers,

Welcome to March. This update brings both some good and some bad news. It was supposed to be about 1–2 weeks earlier, but the reason for its delay will soon be as clarified as ghee.

I'll start with the bad. Two weeks ago I was diagnosed with skin cancer. It's not the worst kind, but is serious enough to require surgery and I'm booked for treatment at the end of the month. I've been told to expect another month for recovery. Fortunately, the treatment prognosis is good and, save for regular checkups, I should be mostly ok afterwords.

Yes, but, still. As you may well imagine, the diagnosis was not the easiest thing to process, nor am I looking forward to the surgery and healing process.

It may also cause delays. It shouldn't cause too many, but it may. Let's hope not. Could be worse, after all.

Ok, that was the bad news.

The editing on the OGA is nearing the end, the zines are writ and waiting to go into editing, and so I'm tackling the last part: the cards.

All along I'd meant to make them feel a little more worn down, aged, so now I've finished the hand-drawn borders for the text and stat boxes. I've still to finish all the hand-written labels and I want to tweak the set (nemesis, ministry, etc.) labels. I'm also seriously considering (i.e. I will probably do it) designing a set of custom ligatures for the blocks on the left.

The conceit of the cards is that you can use them for a straight up card game (the swords and numbers), you can use them to generate random opponents (level and life), and to generate random powers (or effects or traps or what have you), and the cards themselves also provide location / character / event / item ideas (with the happy text below).

I'm also going to do some custom ligatures / stylings for the roman numerals ... because why not? Well ... I'll see. I'll do a test on those.

The cards also provide more context on some art from the UVG, for those who want more bones for their players to gnaw upon.

A few of the cards are not designed as part of the in-game card game, but just there as art cards to fill out the deck to 60. Still ... I trust they will look nice and perform the other functions.

Next update I will either have the first full deck for you (60) as a pdf, or the finished hand-lettered / hand-ligatured style. One of those.

Some of the dropbox links broke a few weeks ago! I've been doing some digital-administrative work in the background and found ... uh ... odd permissions in dropbox. However, fixing that crashed all the existing links. Which is totally brilliant, isn't it?

I'm appending all the revised / fixed links below.

And meanwhile, I'm also finishing up the OGA spot art. About one piece per day.

I'm timing that to be done right about the time the editing is ad acta, so we go to proofs with all the art in place.

Right. That's all I've got to say today.

Oh, no, wait. Sunscreen. Use sunscreen. And don't get sunburnt as a child! Or your children. Don't sunburn those.

Good luck and take care everyone, see you soon!

—Luka,
Seoul, Spring