Hey Backers!

I’ll admit these Backer updates are getting harder and harder to write. To clarify before I talk about the rest of the updates, the person who is writing these is Nick Francia, the independent creator behind Eldritch Automata. I am not Gehenna Gaming, I am not a representative of Gehenna Gaming, and I don’t have control of the most important part of the BackerKit (the bank account).  Also I’ll explain in the update but this is the last update you’ll see in the BackerKit until circumstances change. 

Gehenna Gaming has been largely quiet to my responses. The last time I received a response from them was March 30th in which they told me a lawyer would be sending over paperwork (presumably the one I had sent over initially). Before that, the last message I received from them was March 10th. It’s tough to write these updates because I feel as much in the dark about the important stuff than anyone else is. And with the lack of response becoming more sparse over time (before I would at least get a single response back a week) I’m skeptical that they intend to give the funding back. With the funding being as crucial to finishing the PDF, printing the books, supplying the Backers. So the question goes, where do I go from here? I’d like to think that my previous partnership with Gehenna Gaming would have ensured the smoothest transition. Litigation has come up as a possibility but is extremely pricey and puts us on a path that would take years from what legal consultation has given us. In the case of the funding it seems we are forced to an unknown timeline and I am being forced to move on counting it as a loss until it isn’t. This sucks, I know you know it sucks. But I’d like to tell you why “it sucks” is an understatement. 

I began writing what would become Eldritch Automata in 2017. Almost ten years have been spent writing this damn thing. I watched it go from a novel to a PbtA hack for a fan Neon Genesis Evangelion game to a full blown TTRPG system. I didn’t even know what the TTRPG industry was, I was still living in my apartment in Arizona working at a crappy call center a year or so out of college. Before I was a writer and designer, I was a player and a fan. Now fast forward to see what could amount to work be held up red-tape, and knowing that the funding to make all of it a reality is just out of reach separated by the single permission on a BackerKit setting is torture. I brought the game to someone I thought would want to fly high with me, I genuinely believe (and I still believe) that Eldritch Automata would become a powerhouse in scifi roleplaying games. That EA would be mentioned alongside Lancer and Beam Saber as some of the best mecha games offered. I got to watch how the game exploded at the best couple PAXs. How people want to play it. I still can’t fathom how we got this close, for parties just to pull out and hold us up for over half a year at this point. It’s heartbreaking for this game, the friendships that were soured, and the achievements that were tainted. 

Yet, we must endure.

As I said before we had made back-up plans for us to forge on ahead in case this happened. So now I’m here to talk about that. We recently sat down with a publisher (in the first of a few meetings we’re going to have with various publishers) talking about the road to finishing Eldritch Automata. We do have an offer for production that will include a trial publishing agreement that would fund the rest of the PDF and do an initial print run available for purchase by Q4 of this year. Where the issue lies is that this does not account for the core rulebook printing for the backers who paid into the original funding that Gehenna Gaming holds. The loose plan currently is to take our profits from that (which would take a few print runs) in order to fund the Backers print run ourselves. This would estimate that we won’t see Backers receiving physical copies until 2027 most likely. Clearly, not the most ideal plan. 

We also discussed what it would look like to open up a print-on-demand special Backer shop that would just have Backers have to pay for the cost of printing production and would ship the book out to them. This is 100% easier and gets people their books faster. But it also involves the Backers paying a little more on top of shipping. As we continue to talk with publishers, new options and possibilities for getting the Backers their books will open up. 

We will not shut the door on getting that funding back and will keep trying to get things from Gehenna Gaming. But it’s an injustice to myself, to you guys, and the game to just wait on that. So we’re moving ahead with what we know. The next paragraph is our proposed plan for compensating Backers in the case that we need to declare the original funding as a loss.

In terms of the add-ons without the BackerKit funding we’ll have to cancel all add-ons that aren’t the core rulebook (at least physically). Dossiers will still be able to be delivered via PDFs. The Backer special Horrors and Pilots are already complete and in the book. The physical only addons like the patches, the pins, the t-shirts, desk mats, dice, and arms however will not. Especially as some of these are manufactured and still in the hands of Gehenna Gaming.  Now of course this leaves us with a “what can we do” to offer compensation. Most likely what we’ll end up doing is separating Backers into tiers depending on what they backed at (and addons bought), and continue to offer free products of Eldritch Automata (digital) going forward which means supplements and operations or deep discount vouchers to basically allow you to buy anything new at manufacturing value until we’ve matched what you roughly spent. In the future if we’re able to fulfill these add-ons we will, but consider this the loose plan. Stretch goals such as the campaign book from Storyteller’s Forge, and Eldritch Automata: Homefront are still on the docket. But like said before I can’t even begin to think about those until at least the PDF of the core is done. 

This will be the last update on the BackerKit. If Gehenna Gaming does not give me control or access to the BackerKit and the funds, I literally cannot fulfill the campaign. All updates will now exclusively go through the Discord Server, and email list. I’ll attach links at the very end of this update. This might be confusing to some, but we need to draw a line on the separation between the entities of Nick Francia and Gehenna Gaming even harder than we already have. If in time, the BackerKit has been given back to me in full control I will return to making updates here.

My last act for the time being on this BackerKit will be to release the updated edition of the BackerKit Preview. This includes the first half of the book plus the Enemy Codex allowing you to utilize all the enemies for your ongoing Eldritch Automata games and rules to make your own. This is offered to backers only. Please take these rules and run the game to your hearts content, I hope you enjoy it. I would love to hear about your games in the Discord. 

The Eden Automata Pilot Academy otherwise known as the Garden, is humanity’s most controversial answer to the training and deployment of pilots for the Automata. Established within a remote mountain range among harsh and perpetual winter conditions, the facility was built to combine natural isolation with already existing underground infrastructure to house a robust training facility for the next generation of Automata pilots. Originally a mining complex, it has been retrofitted and rebuilt with state-of-the-art training facilities, and a community that mimics a school based learning environment. The academy’s directive is simple: to train and ready Automata pilots from different countries from a pool of specially identified recruits. The controversy in the Garden arises from the fact that the recruitment pool focuses on younger ages, roughly 13 to 18. The decision to recruit and train young candidates is a divisive one. In a world that still regularly communicates with one another, something like the Garden would not exist. But in a world largely separated from one another, the Garden is not known by many and the credentials for the recruitment pool even more so.

It is not secret that one of Eldritch Automata’s biggest inspirations is Neon Genesis Evangelion, it is built into the bones and identity of Eldritch Automata. However, Eldritch Automata by default does not consider the default pilots of the Automata to be children. We talk about how war affects people in general but never how it affects the young ones. For a game that’s focused on psychological torture, body horror, and the brutalities of war, please make sure everyone is onboard with playing children who will undoubtedly go through all of that and more. The Garden is abusive, it’s a mill for churning out pilot fodder whose retirement plan largely consists of being torn apart by cosmic horrors. 

The Eden Automata Pilot Academy divides its training into four distinct but closely integrated sectors, each designed to develop and train different aspects of a pilot's capabilities. As recruits advance through their training at the Gardens, more specialized training is undergone to focus on honing a pilot’s strength and mitigating weaknesses. The training focuses on: Synchronizational Piloting, Physical Conditioning, Technical Proficiency, and Tactical Operations.

The Combat Threshold Rating, or CTR, is an important part of a student’s time at the Garden and represents the recruit’s overall score and ability to keep calm under extreme duress. It is a measure of a recruit’s worth and recruits who score higher on high earning squads often enjoy perks including more comfortable living spaces, extra portions of food, or even more free time. This is a new trackable stat you can utilize when playing in campaigns that are focused around being pilots within the Academy. 

Alongside CTR, comes the new punishment mechanic. The Garden of Gethsemane serves as Eden Automata Pilot Academy’s most advanced and one of their most dangerous training systems to date. Gethsemane is a state of the art fear induction chamber that uses Anathema technology and neural stimulation to psychologically profile and create personalized scenarios based on the user's fear. Gethsemane is designed to induce trauma under controlled conditions so that players may be broken and rebuilt on a rapid schedule. Mechanics of Gethsemane operate around the previous Combat Threshold Rating, as Gethsemane acts as punishment/consequence to those who allow their CTR to drop to below 0.

I want to give a special shoutout and thanks to everyone who has sent kind and encouraging words to myself and the rest of the other people who are still involved in Eldritch Automata. This game has truly been a labor of love, and the development of it has been a test to see how much I love TTRPGs. It has not been easy, the circumstances around this game are in every waking moment I have and many lessons have been learned about how I would conduct business in publishing this a second time around.

Discord Server: https://discord.gg/cuEwTcP2T7