Howdy, pardner! Steven here and, oh boy, have I got some news.
The Small Announcement
You might've noticed that this account was renamed from "Huckleberry RPG" to "Adventures in Lollygagging", which is the game's publishing label. For context, Adventures in Lollygagging is the actual play channel run by my good friend, Jeff Baker, who is also one of Huck's editors and scenario writers. Years and years ago, a step dice system with a 1930's supernatural noir setting was designed and then rebranded (pun intended) into a weird western called Huckleberry. Jeff was one of the playtesters for that original noir system, so he's been involved with this project from the literal beginning.
I've been a cast member on Adventures in Lollygagging for years now and when I made plans to print Huck, I begged Jeff to be my publisher. It was an easy choice on my part. Jeff has been one of Huckleberry's chief supporters from the get-go. He's smart, driven, creative, and I knew he'd have my back the whole way.
"Uva Uvam Vivendo Varia Fit" - Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
But Huckleberry isn't the only game we want to make here at Adventures in Lollygagging. Jeff's been working on his own system for just as long as I've been working on Huckleberry (maybe even longer, but if we check the dates, I'll just feel old). His system is called We're in Danger and it perfectly emulates all the classic slashers, disaster flicks, and sci-fi horror films of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Ya know, back when movies rocked.
So we're renaming the account to Adventures in Lollygagging to reflect the broader publishing label rather than a specific game.
Coming to Backerkit this October!
The Big Announcement - We're in Danger!
We're in Danger is a tabletop roleplaying game that pits a group of would-be survivors against life-threatening Dangers. The term Danger describes the deadly villains, hazards, and situations players must overcome. The game takes inspiration from an array of sources, and aims to create the tense and immediate experiences of horror and disaster stories. Flexible rules allow for a variety of genres. Coming to Backerkit this October!
I've been fortunate enough to playtest We're in Danger for dozens of sessions and to be a sounding board for Jeff when he needs feedback. I can't stop gushing about the system. As a designer, it's one of those games that I look at and go "Man, that's so clever, I wish I had thought of that". I'm genuinely excited to have been part of its development.
Now that Huckleberry has gone to print (more details below) and almost to fulfillment, we're announcing We're in Danger as our next project, coming to theaters Backerkit this October! This project is going to be lean and mean. The rewards are focused on the book with minimal accessories, in order to get the game into your hands as soon as possible. Huckleberry is delivering in under 12 months from funding and we hope to shave some time off that number for We're in Danger.
For a Few Announcements More
I've got two big pieces of news regarding Huckleberry's manufacturing progress. Starting with the good news: the books are at print! I've been working with our printer for the past two weeks to ensure the digital proofs are as perfect as can be. I owe a huge thank you to all of the people that reached out to me asking for rules clarifications or flagging typos before we went to print. Your help was invaluable and together we've polished Huckleberry into the best possible book it can be. I also just dropped v1.51 of the PDF, incorporating all of those tiny little fixes. You can redownload it from your DriveThruRPG library for free. I'm so excited for you all to get your physical copies!
And now for the manufacturing mistake. There was a miscommunication between myself, my fantastic partners at Awesome Dice, and our dice manufacturer. This kind of thing happens when there's three parties involved, unfortunately, but I cannot thank the good folks at Awesome Dice enough for working very quickly to find a solution. But I'm getting ahead of myself - you don't even know what the problem was, yet!
Here's a picture of the dice I received from the manufacturer. As you can see, despite the poor quality phone camera, the dice are beautiful. The premium resin and sharp edges feel incredible to roll. The picture does not do justice to the colors, fill, or transparency either. They sparkle in all the right ways to make my inner dice goblin as happy as can be. BUT! There's supposed to be a Huckleberry spade logo in place of each "1" on the dice. 4 dice of each set of 6 are missing that logo. Since rolling Snake Eyes is an important mechanic in Huckleberry, the dice need to make it easy to spot when that critical fumble appears. And on a personal note, I've been looking forward to saying "Aw, Huck my life." when both of those logos pop up... :P
I first became aware of this mistake a few weeks ago. There was a delay in shipping, with the dice first going from China to my US fulfilment partner in Florida, then to myself in California. This issue was my fault. Pre-campaign, I agreed to have sample dice made from the resin and fill materials without new molds so that I could wait to pay the mold fees until after the Backerkit funded. Mold fees are the most expensive part of creating new dice, so I was hesitant to pay upfront and out of pocket. After the project funded, I gave the go ahead to create the entire line of dice, without requesting new samples to be made. The original samples were amazing, Awesome Dice had incredible communication with me throughout the entire process, and I felt confident we were all on the same page. This was my mistake - I should've asked for new samples after the molds were made. Lesson learned! Always measure twice to cut once.
Is the Problem Solved?.. Mostly.
Again, Awesome Dice have been great partners and as soon as I informed them of the error, they had a solution to me within an hour. In the past few weeks, the manufacturer created new molds and recast sets of 4 to replace all of the misprinted dice. In fact, the second casting finished three days ago. The new dice are currently in-transit to my fulfilment partners in the UK and US. Here's some pictures of the newly re-made dice.
So while the manufacturing error is fully resolved, I'm now left with a logistics problem. It would be a real pain to replace 4 of the 6 dice in each set with the new dice. We manufactured almost 400 sets of dice and they're currently split between two different warehouses - some in the UK and some in the US. To sort and replace the dice, I would need to coordinate with (and pay) two different teams. And what would I do with the misprints anyways? I love dice as much as the next gamer, but I don't need 400 single d8s or d12s lying around! (I'll concede that we could all use more d6s and d10s, but 400 is still a bit much.)
TL;DR - Here's the fix:
All backers that pledged for a set of dice will receive 10 dice instead of 6. If you pledged for two sets, you'll receive 20 dice instead of 12. Each expanded set will contain the 6 dice with Huckleberry logos as promised, along with the 4 misprints that are still premium, sharp-edge resin filled with either a liquid core or silver foil flakes. The only "flaw" in the misprints is that they have a 1 instead of a spade logo. There will be no increase in shipping charges for the extra dice. Any additional costs from picking fees, extra weight, or larger packaging, will be covered by myself.
Hopefully, y'all will find this a satisfactory solution. And it shouldn't slow down our fulfilment timeline, as the dice are already being shipped to my fulfilment partners.
