We are still waiting on a couple art pieces from Rick (he is still catching up on work while caring for his kids' recovery) but everything else is complete. We'll be sending off the deck in February for a proof, make sure it looks good, then hit that production button! Ditto on the art prints.

So brace yourselves, we shall be charging cards for the add-ons soon! Probably on the 1st of February.

But in the meantime, the album is complete and ready for you all! I'll be dropping the Google Folder link below for backers to download, but anyone can listen free online on Bandcamp, or just search "troubleseekers Downupright" on any major service!

We are also toying with the idea of doing a limited run of physical CDs for the album. Is this something folks might be interested in? Let us know in the poll below, or in the comments!



And here's some words from Downupright - the composer themself:


The vibrant writing of the stories in the *Troubleseekers* rulebook just leapt into my mind like a riveting movie, and it was a thrilling challenge to write what I saw as the soundtrack to that movie. The evocative track names combined with the foley storytelling at the start of every track should be able to help all of you visualize the mood and action as you read the rulebook, if I did my job right. :)

Musically, I set out to design a very specific "sound palette" that I could apply to the whole album so that everything sounded like part of the same family. Outside of the O Fortuna cover, harsh and aggressive sounds are not present in most tracks, and drum kit sample selection and synth sound design is on the softer side. (But how was I ever going to pass up the chance to dubstep-cover O Fortuna in a soundtrack literally about Fortuna?!) Degradation is the name of the game, with every track as well as most buses and masters being run through several layers of tape for "softening", and many passages degraded further through tinny speakers or VHS, for an overall sense of nostalgia. In arrangement, every track follows a pattern of foley storytelling -> beat influenced by an electronica great -> compositional passage influenced by a postmodern composer great, before it all comes together at the end. On the hardware side, I had a fantastic time more deeply exploring the Ableton Push 3, where I made heavy use of the MPE support to create synths where every note captures 3 additional points of performance, creating much more dramatic performances. These are especially audible in the later half of the album.

I had a wonderful experience making this album throughout 2025 and I hope you get a lot of joy listening to it, either in tandem with your other *Troubleseekers* experiences or as a standalone.

And folks, if you like what they've done with this, you should absolutely check out their latest project! As a backer, you contribute to the narrative - they use your contributions in the lyrics! Wild! It just launched this week, so go give it a look here.

Some of this will be a recap of info you already know, but we're giving some additional details to some of it.
Feel free to skip to the end if you've backed other projects of ours, it's the same info from other updates - but we have a special treat for you all at the end!

We want to begin with an apology for the long silence. Things have been incredibly volatile in the lives of many of our staff, especially that of our project manager who handles all the updates and team coordination.

Things started with multiple hospitalisations in 2024 due to lung issues that were finally determined to be a combination of: acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, lung parenchyma with mild interstitial chronic inflammation and organising pneumonia, with long term hypersensitivity pneumonitis and reactive airway disease. Atop that, a constant high white blood count led to being assigned an oncologist and given a possible leukaemia diagnosis pending a bone biopsy that the oncologist is currently delaying due to other health factors and surgeries happening.

They then endured violence from former housemates in the spring that resulted in a restraining order that said persons then broke to ensure the death of our staffer's senior kitties. For health and safety, our project manager had to move; and then was forced to undertake a second move under incredibly short notice a week prior to having full hip replacement surgery in October due to a breakdown of relationship dynamics. Then there was of course, said surgery, which they are still in recovery from - it takes about a year to return to full functionality but most of the critical healing takes place in the first four months. They are currently safe, but have another (unrelated) major surgery in February and have to move again in March or April when their current housing situation is changing.

On top of this, our layout person for a previous major project became gravely ill and bedridden since July (right after they had begun to work on Keepsakes) - unable to even sit upright due to pain. In August they were diagnosed - stage 4 Cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) - started in the liver and progressed into their spine. September was the start of chemo, but a bad reaction to the first dose landed them in the hospital, and ketoacidosis kept them there for weeks. October and November had them in rehab, and they were finally cleared to go home and resume chemo this month, though they are still not at a point where they can resume work in any manner. We have finally retained a new layout person in the interim, and they are working hard to get Keepsakes into a state where it can be released.

The Paragon Tarot pins are fully designed and approved, and most have completed production. Our manus are retaining hold of them while we wait and weather through all these tariff changes imposed by the Trump administration on goods coming from China. We refuse to pass those cost increases on to you, but that in turn means waiting longer to ensure we can afford the cost changes. We expect costs to stabilise during quarter one of 2026, and will have our manus ship us the remaining pins at that time. We do have some designs in hand, and will be endeavouring to ship those out beginning January 2026 for those whose orders include only those designs.

We have other projects in the works and in various stages of completion, including other enamel pins, playing cards, and a ttrpg book that went through crowdfunding. The Paragon 5e supplement is nearly completed; we expect it to be ready for release in the first quarter of 2026. The related Paragon tarot deck now has completed major arcana art. Our merch mogul is hard at work on the minor arcana now, but that is a lot of cards so it will likely complete by quarter three of 2026. 

And in the meantime, our game designers are participating in some game jams and working on other long term projects. You can find the game jams on itch.io, and new Mhar supplements and a Quickstart Mhar guide over on DTPRG. Our podcast team split apart, but have now retained a new partner and will continue and hopefully grow. Our live stream team is taking a break for the holidays, but we should have further one shots and limited campaigns resuming in 2026.

As a reminder, each of our projects are undertaken by different teams, so new projects have no impact on the progression of past ones. The bottlenecks on fulfilment are the result of delays at other levels, not the development teams.

Supporting our other projects helps support marginalised persons who work with us (neither project management nor upper management are paid, all funds go toward the people who work with us to make these games and accessories and operational costs). 

Troubleseekers ttrpg and accompanying card deck is well underway. The writing and editing is completed, we just await one more piece of interior art and the cover from our artist - who is still helping his children recover from a horrible accident that happened earlier this year - after which it will move to layout. There is not an update from him regarding his family, and he is diving back more full-time into his work and catching up so we're assuming no news is good news and the children continue to heal and recover well.

The card deck is with our other artist, who has completed the card back and is working now on the design of the card faces.

And finally - a SURPRISE for you all!

After some discussion with Downupright, despite not reaching the funding stretch goal for a full length album, it was decided to go ahead and move forward with it! You will all receive more music, free! It is complete now and fully mastered. We'll be sending out a folder for you to download in it's entirety, but for now go check it out on Soundcloud! 

Alright folks!

Our merch & media gremlin has tinkered with things to create and properly size the prints, and we have locked in the pricing! So, in the add-ons section, and in the pre-order store if you missed the campaign, you can pick up an 11x17 print of the Hijab girl, Dame Fortuna, or the Troubleseekers gang, or a 12x12 of the Mushroom Forest. And as an added bonus, our gremlin included 11x17 prints of both male Oligarchs (Rick hasn't completed the female Oligarch quite yet so we couldn't offer her) as well because they liked them so much!

So add on as many prints as you want, and share the preorder store link with friends and family! Remember, all proceeds over production costs for all the art print sales go to the artist, Rick, to help his family with post-hospital costs for their kids. Rick is getting back into the backlog of work he has now, but at a(n understandably) slower pace. He has touched base on which pieces remain for him to do for us, and once those are in, we can send him the text so he can start on the layout. The kids are slowly recovering, starting therapy both physical and psychological to process the extreme trauma, and he feels very blessed at the community support everyone has shown for them so far.

Beginning Monday 14 July 2025 at 6pm PST/9pm EST - and every 2nd and 4th Monday following through the end of September - we will be hosting a live play stream of Sleepy Hollow - one of Rick's games - run by one of Rick's team. We'll be sharing Rick's PayPal over chat during the stream for folks who wish to just contribute to him directly, so do tune in for that if you like spooky things and want to give to him directly rather than through GoFundMe or by purchasing the art prints through us.

Hey, all!

Here's the results from the poll! It was a tie between these three:

So! These are the three we will get prints done up of! Stay tuned to the pledge manager and pre-order store in the coming weeks as we get these pieces ready to order and added to the add-ons!

In our last update, we shared the current status for Rick's family. In this one, we'll let you know what our management team is dealing with currently:

Our project manager spent a week out of town for Kublacon (which fell on their birthday as well! 45 years!). After returning home from that, they have had a series of medical appointment follow-ups with their specialists only to learn they need three surgeries this year! Deviated septum (ENT specialist was waiting for their lungs to recover enough to withstand surgery), optic nerve lesion/pit in the left eye (they'll share the imaging from the optometrist below; it's actually on both eye nerves but is currently only dramatically affecting the left eye), and surgery on their left hip (avascular necrosis of femoral head alongside arthritis).

They are home for now, but over the next few weeks will be getting all those surgeries scheduled, so we don't know exact timings on some things until those are on the calendar to plan around. Will try to update monthly as we move forward, as much as health allows us to remember, so don't be afraid to poke in the comments to ask for updates - the reminders are appreciated, given the state of ... well ... *waves hands around* everything.

Here's the eye scans from last week's appointment. left vs right, and last year vs this. You can see the layer separation happening, it's kind of crazy!

Just a quick update for everyone on how our artist Rick's family is doing. 
(Tonya is their family friend who organised the Go Fund Me and has been a huge help to them all in so many ways.)
The art poll should be closing soon, so we'll have the final pieces that were popular on the pledge manager once that's finished. We are also collaborating with Rick's team at Kids In the Attic to do some charity stream one shots of Rick's ttrpgs. So stay tuned for those on our Twitch channel over the summer!
Meanwhile, here's the update from Rick:

May 22nd, 2025

We wanted to share a quick update on how the kids are doing, and to thank you, truly, for every bit of support you’ve given. This road hasn’t been easy, but your kindness has helped us breathe, regroup, and keep moving forward.

Here’s where we are right now:

Mya is still scheduled to undergo reconstructive surgery on her knee. She's in pain most days wearing an immobilization brace, but handling it like a champ. She just had an ER visit because ortho wanted to make sure she had no clots from swelling, and all is good for now. We’ll know more soon about timing and the recovery process ahead.

Marilyn continues to wear a back brace for her spinal fractures and is still healing from a broken collarbone and hand. She had X-rays today and has a neuro appointment at the end of this week to check on progress. She’s been pushing hard to graduate early, but the injuries have made that a struggle. We’re doing everything we can to help her cross that finish line.

Madilyn is doing better physically. She still has soreness and aches, but overall she's recovering well. Emotionally, though, this has hit her hard, as it has with all the kids in different ways.

Ricky is healing from major abdominal surgery. He had a nick to his kidney and aorta, and then had a small seroma we needed to treat with antibiotics. We're now waiting on follow-up appointments with a cardiovascular surgeon to monitor his recovery and make sure everything is healing as it should.

This week we also started psychological evaluations, and we should have resources in place soon for PTSD and trauma recovery, not just for one, but for any of the kids who need it. That kind of help is hard to come by, and it’s happening because of the support we’ve received.

There’s still a long way to go, but we’re doing it together. One day at a time. Thank you for helping us get this far and thank you to Tonya Sparks for organizing and handling this (and so much more).

With gratitude,
Rick Hershey & Family