Updates

I usually get the pledge manager as quickly as I possibly can, usually jumping the gun on the two-week period that both Backerkit and Kickstarter like to allow for collecting pledges. This time has been a little different, because Backerkit’s process is a little more intricate than I remember, but mostly because I’ve been on the road so much the last few weeks hitting the convention trail to both Denver (GenghisCon) and Salt Lake City (SaltCON Spring).

But we’re almost ready to send it out — early in the coming week, I’d say. For those of you who ordered our Places by the Way/Found by the Way as add-ons, you’ll be able to choose which version you want. For everyone, you’ll have one last chance to tack add-ons to your order.

For those of you who participated in one of our Zinetopia cross-collabs, please keep an eye out for your specific rewards, as I intend to get those out to you soon. Those of you who also backed Hextopia will get from Ramen Sandwich Press a coupon — valid only from our web store at www.ramensandwich,com — for 30% off of our random encounters books, as many copies as you’d like to order. The coupons will be valid until the end of April 27 and you can use them up to 4 times.

For those of you who also backed Tent & Bedroll, you will get an email with a link for downloading a free PDF copy of Tome of Utility Drawer via DriveThruRPG. If you would prefer to not deal with DTRPG, please let me know and I will have it emailed to you as an attachment instead.

Thanks again for your support!

Just a quick update to let you know that Book of Plagues is written and I passed the files off to layout this weekend before leaving for Salt Lake City and SaltCON Spring 2026. You haven’t received the pledge manager because I haven’t quite finished putting together yet, but I figured it was more important (and a more substantial load off of my mind) if I were to finish writing the manuscript before I left town yesterday. I’ll get as much work done from the road as I can this week.

While The Book of Plagues is in production, I will move on to our next project, which is already on the drawing board and slated to be part of Backerkit’s Pocketopia event in May: A new Places by the Way/Found by the Way location module set in a rainforest and called “Children of the Mountain God.” It’s still early days, but it could use some followers to improve its visibility.

Thank you to everyone who participated in Zinetopia 2026 and backed The Book of Plagues! The campaign just ended, but there remains work to do — in addition to finishing the pledge manager and getting it ready for distribution, I have to organize my part of the two cross-collab cross-promotions that came with this campaign. This will happen as quickly as possible.

Of course, work on the Book of Plagues continues, and the writing is close to finished at this point. I finished writing the introduction while on the road earlier this week (more about that soon on my Substack blog, where you can always keep track of what is going on with Ramen Sandwich Press), and this leaves only a handful of entries and a brief appendix of random disease table to write up.

Unfortunately, we only made it 2/3 of the way to the stretch goal. But who knows? If the book proves popular enough, perhaps there will a Book of Plagues II, or perhaps additional material will find its way out in another form.

In the meantime, thank you again for your support, and I'll be in touch soon!

We’re coming down to the end of Zinetopia. 2026 and I want to thank all of you who have supported The Book of Plagues. We have hit our funding target, work on the book is coming along nicely, everything is proceeding more or less according to the original plan.

The only hitch is that we are less than halfway to the campaign’s stretch goal and ginning up some extra content for your disease-ridden use and pleasure. Fortunately, there is a tool available for you to help with this, and I’m honestly a little surprised that more of you haven’t taken advantage of it: add-ons.  We’re offering our entire catalogue of RPG books at discount prices that you will never see again, since we just had to raise some of our print copy costs. Each item that you add on to your pledge counts toward the funding total, so it helps us along toward hitting the stretch goal.

At the moment, I am sitting in my hotel room in Aurora, Colorado, waiting for Day 2 of Genghis Con to begin. Day 1 was quite successful, and I am reminded of how appealing our Places by the Way and Found of by the Way series of location modules have proven to be once we can get through the signal-to-noise problem and actually draw people’s attention to them. My original intention in creating both series was to generate a library full of locations that you could drop into your campaign as needed or as desired to give your players a diversion from the main story. However, they seem to have proven more broadly useful than that — they have been run successfully as stand-alone mini-adventures, or even just scrapped for parts and individual NPCs and side quests used in a different context. It’s all good to me, and honestly, one of the most rewarding parts of this process has been hearing from DMs who have used something I wrote for purposes quite different from what I had imagined.

Now you, too, have the chance to pick up these useful additions to your library of DM tools at discount prices and help us along to the stretch goal. Add-ons! Don’t miss you chance at them!

... and it's mostly for Pathfinder folks, although any backer may answer. I've just added a new poll question: Do you want me to write my own rules for handling rabies, even though both editions have their own rules (in the Bestiary entry for dogs)?

I explain why I'm asking in this blog post.

Thanks again for your support!